


Sins of the Father

by Mikey (mikes_grrl)



Series: More Man than You [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:54:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikes_grrl/pseuds/Mikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wakes up in 2012. A lot of things have changed. Some things haven't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the sequel to More Man than You. Things to keep in mind:
> 
> 1\. **This is not an OTP kind of story**. Steve falls in and out of love, looks for happiness where he can, and enjoys sex like a mature adult. If you are a hard core shipper of Steve/[anyone] then this is not the story for you, sorry. Check out the pairing tags, 'kay?
> 
> 2\. Steve is 27 1/2 years old when he falls into the ice; he has spent the majority of his life as a scrawny, skinny guy and only about three years as a super soldier. I feel like this needs to be pointed out because it does affect a lot of his personality and decisions. Also, I don't write naive, innocent, inexperienced Steve so if that is your preferred flavor (and that's cool! No judgments!) you're not going to enjoy this story. 
> 
> 3\. You can read this story w/out reading the prequel, but you might get surprised by some things. Who Steve is here is very much informed by who he was in the 1930s and 1940s in that story, particularly in regards to Howard Stark and Bucky Barnes. 
> 
> 4\. As with the prequel, I don't spend any time re-writing scenes that happened in the movies because I don't see the point of a verbatum transcription as I'm not changing anything. Assume all canon is canon and happened the way you saw it. In fact the whole of the Avengers movie happens sometime between chapters two and three. Just be prepared.
> 
> 5\. Also as with the prequel, it is imperative to keep in mind that Steve is a child of the 1920s and 1930s; he was enlightened and open-minded and queer, but he still retains the vocabulary of his era, which can be offensive to our modern sensibilities. There isn't a lot of derogatory talk here, certainly there is much less than was in MMtY, but Steve has a steep learning curve to climb up. It would be a good idea to reference the first part of this series, the Study Guide, for more information about this. Thanks!
> 
> 6\. While the story isn't 100% polished, it is drafted out. I won't keep to regular updates because of RL demands and sleep and stuff like that, but chapters WILL be posted in a timely matter and the story will be finished.

Steve woke up, knew something was terribly wrong and ran. It wasn't thought out and he had no real idea of what he expected to happen, because part of his brain still thought he might be somewhere in a HYDRA base in Europe. 

But wasn't, not even close. 

When Director Fury walked Steve back to the headquarters of the organization called SHIELD, Steve had gone along quietly, taking in the amazing changes of the city he thought he knew. 

But his shock wore off as doctors ran a battery of tests and Fury's people grilled Steve on what he did, and did not, remember. They asked him questions about his life in a way that was distant and clinical. One researcher, Dr. Kane, was a nice, matronly woman with salt and pepper hair cropped as short as a Marine's, who asked Steve a lot of questions about how he felt. He generally answered by simply saying "confused." She chuckled each time and tapped a note into the pads they all carried around with them, which Steve figured out on his own was some kind of transmission device. 

Dr. Kane studied the nurse who was taking a skin scraping from the inside of Steve's arm, then looked up at him. "I don't mean to pry, Captain, but we'd like to know exactly how you handled the death of Sgt. James Barnes?"

Steve stared at her, and for the first time she looked a little flustered. "We know you were close friends and grew up together, and his death was traumatic for you. I'm just trying to gauge your mental landscape, if you will."

"As far as I'm concerned, he died two days ago, ma'am. I'm not handling it very fucking well." 

The entire room stopped and the nurse taking his sample stepped backwards, appalled. She glanced at Dr. Kane and then hurried out. 

Dr. Kane was looking at him hard, her eyes flinty and betraying her intelligence. Steve kept his mouth shut by dent of pure willpower. 

"My apologies, Captain. Somehow I don't think it has really sunk in with anyone, including me, that for you the last 70 years did not happen. For you it really was just yesterday."

Steve clenched his jaw. "Yes, ma'am." 

She tucked her tablet under her arm. "We're done here for today. You're going with Dr. Lankes over there for a very long, very boring debriefing on the history of the 20th Century. By this time tomorrow, I sincerely doubt you'll be caught up," she said with a kind smile.

Steve nodded at her, too exhausted and broken to even feel gratitude. 

The next six days were a crash course in gross generalizations of history: post WWII, the Nuclear Era, the Cold War, Civil Rights, political upheavals and the changing of presidents. Steve was not entirely sure how he felt about Ronald Regan being president. He had loved him as "the Gipper" in Knute Rockne, and even done a few military shorts with him during the USO run. Ronnie was a nice guy with a great sense of humor, but he was also a controversial former president who died in 2004. 

That summed up a lot of Steve's feelings about everything. 

It was hard to get mad about the stupidity of the Cold War when reading the speeches of the proud colored man, Dr. Martin Luther King. It seemed for every major step forward—the U.S. had landed men on the damn Moon—there was a huge hurdle of injustice and stupidity to overcome. Steve's analysis of the mess in Afghanistan consisted mostly of "What the hell?" The morning after watching footage of 9/11, when he saw two majestic towers he had never once envisioned in New York crumbling to dust, Steve shut himself in his room and cried. By the time he was done, curled up on his bunk in his small quarters, he was not entirely sure who or what he was crying for: 9/11, Bucky, all those wars, the Holocaust, himself. 

When he emerged, there was still so much he did not know, but he was ready to move on. He told Fury he wanted quarters outside of the SHIELD facility, he wanted civilian clothes, and he wanted to know if he had any money anywhere. 

Fury tried to stare him down, but he was no Colonel Phillips. Steve stood in his office with his arms folded and stared back at him.

"Fine. I'll get it arranged."

"Thank you." Steve relaxed.

"You should know: you were never declared dead." Fury leaned forward, setting his elbows on his desk.

"That's odd," Steve said, buying time. He was not sure what Fury was getting at, but he was sure that Fury was a man who always had a point. 

Fury's lips twitched. "It was a political move. No one wanted to be the guy who killed Captain America, even on paper."

"Right." Steve nodded. He could see how that would happen, and all the political bickering which would go on over his death. It was just ridiculous enough to be true.

Fury huffed. "You have 70 years of back pay."

"WHAT?" Steve gawped before shutting his mouth.

"A special trust was set up by Howard Stark, SHIELD, and the Army. Stark's lawyers are the trustees, while the Army gets to keep 10% of the interest earned from the money sitting around in investment accounts. I'm getting too much fucking paperwork on my desk about transferring the monies over to you, now that you've shown up alive and kicking. What you need to know is that between the paycheck that was deposited regularly and the return interest on investments, you're a multi-millionaire."

Steve felt around and stumbled into a chair. "What?"

"Keep in mind that a million dollars won't buy what it did in 1945. Legal should have some documents for you to sign in a few days, it's a real mess because honestly there was no plan for ever transferring the funds over to you. Everyone thought you were dead."

"Everyone except Stark."

Fury squinted for a second. "You mean Howard? Yeah, he never gave up. I just assumed he was crazy. I wasn't wrong, but then neither was he." 

Steve parsed the statement. "There's another Stark?"

Fury sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead, the first time he had ever shown anything resembling an emotion around Steve. "Yes, there is. His son, Tony."

Steve's jaw dropped again. "Howard had a son?"

"You sound pretty surprised by that."

Steve mentally back-peddled quickly. "Director Fury, as I seem to have to remind you people every day, 1945 was last week for me. Last I knew, Howard was enjoying being a bachelor. He enjoyed it a lot," he stressed. 

Fury grinned. "He enjoyed being a bachelor long after he got married."

Steve cringed, trying not to think about what that implied. "And his son?"

"Enjoys being a bachelor. A lot." Fury frowned again. "I'll get you a brief on Tony Stark, he's hard to explain without sounding like a tabloid. Especially since…I'll send you the briefing." Fury waved the comment off. "The point of this conversation is that you don't have to worry about money, not now, and not for the rest of your life. I don't know your current net worth, but it's well over 20 million, last I checked."

"Oh my GOD."

Fury just stared at him, unimpressed.

"Sir, my annual pay as a captain was $2,400 dollars. I got a rent allowance of $45 I never used. I thought I was rich. My art career never topped $1,500 a year. Now you're telling me I'm richer than Howard Stark? Or as rich as he was…I suppose his son is worth a lot more than I am?"

"Tony Stark is one of the top ten billionaires in the world."

Steve felt his brain shutting down at the word "billionaire." He rubbed his temples. 

"Get out of here, Rogers, and have your existential financial crisis somewhere else. Go see Agent Xu about getting access to your money. She'll figure out everything about finding you an apartment of your own as well. If I need you, I'll find you."

Steve stood up, saluted, and walked out the room at least 20 million dollars richer than when he entered. The future was a crazy, crazy world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: The basis for this chapter is the idea that Steve met Tony prior to joining forces in Stuttgart in the movie. My rational is twofold: 
> 
> 1\. The mutual animosity has to come from somewhere. While Steve is shown reading Tony’s file in the deleted scene, that’s hardly enough reason to genuinely dislike someone. Also, the mutual animosity was definitely _mutual_ ; Tony, for no given reason, already holds a grudge against Captain America. Their hostility just makes no sense as given, in the movie.  
> 2\. Meanwhile, in the scene where Tony and Bruce confront Steve about Fury’s motives, Tony talks about how Jarvis is running the program to break into the SHIELD computers, and Steve doesn’t blink. My supposition here is that he doesn’t react because he knows who JARVIS is, since he’s met the AI. 
> 
> Given those two admittedly shaky assumptions, I have decided that at some point, Fury took Steve to meet Howard Stark’s son in person, and it all went downhill from there.

Steve had been profoundly unimpressed with Howard Stark’s heir, and that was just from reading his file. Deputy Director Hill suggested that Tony Stark was even less appealing in person, and so Steve was not anxious to meet him. He was only twelve days out of the ice and his whole world view had already taken a beating; he did not need Howard’s son swanning in reminding Steve of everyone he had lost.

Unfortunately, Director Fury disagreed. 

“He’s requested to meet you, and while I’m not interested in humoring Stark I think it’s in everyone’s best interest,” Fury lectured on the drive over. 

Steve refrained from rolling his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“I get that you’re not too fucking excited about this, and I don’t blame you. But given the situation, you will have to meet him sooner or later.”

Steve pointedly did not ask about what “the situation” might entail, instead staring at the back of the SUV driver’s head. 

They were deposited in front of a huge high-rise building, sleek and dangerous looking and possibly the ugliest thing that Steve had ever seen in his life. At least the Chrysler Building had style…although Steve realized with a pang that the deco style he was familiar with and considered “modern” was, 70 or so years later, an anachronism that most architects would probably avoid. He tried not to sigh visibly as a security guard ushered them into a private elevator.

It was not that Steve didn't respect Tony Stark's accomplishments. He had read the details of his kidnapping in Afghanistan and his creation of both the arc reactor and the Iron Man armor as a result. It was impressive, something that Steve doubted even Howard could have pulled off. Anthony Stark was, though, clearly a brat, and Steve smiled remembering what Howard had said about that being a Stark family trait. However it did not mean he had to like it. Anthony Stark was brilliant and charismatic but he was also a man of loose morals and questionable ethics, and Steve didn't approve of the way he had pulled the rug out from the U.S. military by canceling all of Stark Industries' weapons contracts. It was one thing to be idealistic, it was another to put the country in danger because of it. 

Steve carried these thoughts into the building and right up to one of the most impressive red-heads he had ever met. Pretty and slim with a hint of hips, she wore a (very) short skirt and what passed for a modern business jacket. Her shoes looked both lethal and cruel. Even the most dolled up drag queens Steve had known didn't wear platform stilettos as a matter of course, but this lady walked in them as comfortably as Steve wore boots. She met Steve and Fury in the lobby, and she looked royally displeased.

"Director Fury."

"Not my idea, Ms. Potts."

"Believe me, I know. This isn't going to go well, you are aware of that?"

"I wouldn't expect any different." Fury crossed his arms over his chest. 

Ms. Potts sighed and only then turned to Steve, looking him over top to bottom in a way that was scarily familiar. She reminded him of Peggy, even if they didn't look alike. It was more her carriage and her critical eye, and the fact that Steve suspected she would deck a guy flat out with no problem or second thoughts. He held out his hand. "Captain Steve Rogers, ma'am. Pleasure to meet you."

She gave him a weary smile and shook his hand, her fingers thin but strong his grip. "Captain Rogers. Despite appearances, some of us truly are honored to meet an American icon in person. I'm Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries."

Steve tried to stall his surprise, but failed. " _You_ run Stark's company?"

She let go of his hand and her eyes narrowed. Fury visibly stepped away from them, smirking. 

"I just mean, that's wonderful, ma'am, that a lady is allowed…I mean, is able, or that is to say, can run such a large business—" 

"Please be quiet, this is painful to listen to." Ms. Potts said, but she was laughing, her eyes bright. "Not quite the world you left behind, is it, Captain?"

Steve nodded a lot, cringing at the thought of what Peggy would have said about him right then. "Personally I admire strong, independent women but things were different in my day…and honestly, I'm getting tired of saying that." He had no idea why he was so comfortable around her, but it felt safe to just tell her what he was thinking. She _looked_ trustworthy.

"You really are everything they've ever said about you, Steve Rogers." Her smiled turned soft, and part of Steve's stomach clenched. He pulled himself back mentally, remembering the kiss Peggy gave him only a couple of weeks ago. His heart was still taken, even if Peggy and Bucky were long gone to him. Ms. Potts noticed his withdrawal and turned back to Fury. "He's in his office."

"That's new," Fury said, snorting, and Steve picked up on the fact that Tony did not visit his office too much. Another strike against him, and it was easy for Steve to conjure up an image of an irresponsible playboy, raised to privilege and wealth and drunk it. He wasn't even in charge of his own company, which Steve could imagine Howard howling over. 

Ms. Potts led the way to an elevator, pressing her thumb against a pad to make the door open. They rode up in silence for a few seconds, and then a disembodied voice clicked on. 

"Ms. Potts, Sir has moved to the al fresco patio."

Ms. Potts rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Jarvis."

"My pleasure." 

Steve glanced over at Ms. Potts. "You have pretty good security here. Eyes everywhere?"

She gave him a look out of the corner of her eye. "You could say that."

"Understandable. Mr. Stark — and you — are very important people." Steve aimed for diplomacy.

"Mmmm. It's less security and more baby sitting." Ms. Potts stopped talking when the door slid open again, and they walked out into a spartan but elegant hallway. "Jarvis, allow me to introduce you to Captain Rogers," she announced to absolutely no one.

Steve looked around for the camera, but didn't see one. "Hello?"

"Hello, Captain Rogers. It's an honor to have you here at Stark Tower."

"Uh. Thanks. So…" he looked over at Ms. Potts and Fury, who were both tight lipped and amused. It was disconcerting. "So, you located off site, Mr. Jarvis?"

"Just 'Jarvis', please. No, I'm Mr. Stark's personal AI."

"Ay Eye?"

"Artificial Intelligence. Jarvis is just one souped-up computer." Fury chuckled.

"Hardly, Director Fury. I'm a sophisticated amalgamation of several high-density clusters—"

"Enough, Jarvis. Captain Rogers has no idea what any of that is." Ms. Potts sighed.

"You're a…robot?" Steve grasped mentally at some of the _Amazing Stories_ of his youth, trying to place the disembodied voice into a context that made sense. 

"No, as I do not possess a physical body. I exist in the electronic systems incorporated into the building."

"So…you're the building itself?" Steve's brain hurt.

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose I am." Jarvis actually sounded amused. 

Ms. Potts shook her head, looking fond again, but this time for a voice in the walls. Steve was pretty sure the future couldn't get weirder than that. 

"Thank you, Jarvis. We'll head out to the patio now." She started walking with a snap of her heels, and Steve scrambled after her. 

Anthony Edward Stark was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, lounging in a chair on a 'balcony' that looked open to the world below; the glass was there, though, arching up and over the room, giving it the appearance of a bright, airy patio. It was full of plants and art that was the new world's definition of 'modern' (or post-modern…Steve had kind of given up when his instructors reached Andy Warhol). He had on sunglasses and held a drink in his hand that, if Steve's senses were on the mark, was expensive scotch from the smell of it. 

Howard had preferred gin.

Stark looked like a streamlined version of his father: sleeker, meaner, and sharper. If Howard had been the captain of the seas of industry, his son was the shark. He had the same natural beauty that truly dangerous creatures possessed, bright and alert and deadly, but also mesmerizing. The differences were noticeable, and Stark was not simply more refined than his father, but handsomer and far more vast. He filled the fake patio with an innate charm that radiated out from his good looks and disciplined posture. He naturally possessed the power that Howard had strove so hard to grab, and the thought flashed through Steve's mind that no matter the character of the man, this was indeed Howard's greatest creation.

However, Steve thought that the silly goatee made him look a little bit like Ming the Merciless, and that at least had Steve holding back a smile. 

"Tony, Captain America is here to meet you," Ms. Potts said, her voice just shy of antagonistic. Steve liked her even more, in that moment. She had not used his name on purpose, he knew that, and suspected that Tony did too.

Tony stood up with an easy grace that suggested he worked out a lot, even if his muscles were hidden by high-end fabric. He did not put down his drink or take off his sunglasses before holding out his hand. "Captain Rogers."

Steve took his hand and shook it once, firmly. He could crush Tony's hand and they both knew it, so there was no point in posturing. He pulled his hand back. "Mr. Stark."

"Oh, call me Tony. Please." His voice lacked the twang that had marked Howard's delivery. In contrast Tony's diction was polished and neutral. "Glad you could make it."

"Fury insisted," Steve said, and was surprised when Tony gave a fast, almost imperceptible flinch.

Ms. Potts and Director Fury had stepped away and were standing near the door, talking in friendly tones and pretending to ignore them. 

Tony swirled his drink, took a sip, then looked back at Steve. "Look, no offense, but I'm doing this as a favor to Dad."

"Excuse me?"

Tony pursed his lips, took another sip of his drink, then shrugged. "He looked for you."

"I know that," Steve countered, feeling unbalanced by the direction the conversation had taken. "I have been informed of what happened after I went in the ice."

Tony sighed again. "Dad admired you. Almost named me after you, but that would have given me really unfortunate initials since Mother wasn't budging on my first name. So. Anyway…I kind of outgrew the whole Captain America fetish when I was about seven."

Steve had absolutely nothing to say to that inappropriate comment, so settled for staring at Tony blankly. 

"My point is, Dad cared. If he were alive today he'd put everything Stark Industries has at your disposal. Whatever you need, whenever you need it. Just say the word." Tony pursed his lips and looked out the windows. 

"You don't sound very pleased about that yourself," Steve said, feeling like he had to poke the nest to see what would come out. It was a bad habit, but knowing that had never stopped him before. 

"I don't want to talk about my father with you, okay? You need to accept that, because we're not friends, and it's not going to happen. I don't know you, and I'm not a Captain America fan. I'm doing what my Dad would have wanted me to do, because I owe him that."

Steve's temper flared at the tone of Tony's voice, talking about Steve as some obligation to his dead father. "I think if you really felt that way, you would not have gone against his express wishes and dropped all your military contracts with no warning for a misplaced attack of conscience." 

Tony's head turned slowly towards him. Steve waited for him to speak, but Tony took his time, his sunglasses throwing off anything Steve might have seen in his eyes. "Self-righteous, condescending asshole. Somehow I'm just not surprised."

"Yes, I agree, but then how would you describe _me_?" Steve shot back, too used to childish sparring with Bucky and the Commandos to play nice with Howard's obnoxious son.

Tony's jaw dropped in shock and he shifted backwards, putting distance between them, although Steve suspected he wasn't even aware he was doing it. He recovered quickly, though, and saluted Steve with his glass, his smile brutally cold. 

"Ms. Potts, please show the good Captain out." Tony turned his back on Steve and sat down in a chair facing out over the city, crossing his legs and pointedly ignoring them as Ms. Potts led Steve and Fury back the way they came. 

Fury didn't ask him what they had said, either because he overheard or he didn't care. Steve didn't bring it up and was glad to spill out of the car and retreat to his apartment. 

Steve spent the next couple of days wandering around the changed city, sitting under the shadow of Stark’s monument to overcompensation and beating innocent boxing bags into oblivion. His apartment was in the right neighborhood but the wrong era, which reflected Steve's whole life. He knew Fury would call him into work eventually, although what that might actually mean for Steve, he did not know. It wasn’t as if they needed him prancing around in a ridiculous costume with a star on his chest. 

War had changed along with politics and fashion and music to the point that Steve barely recognized any of it as something he knew. There only remained hints of the world he had stepped out of when he went into the ice, such as a few buildings that still stood and the military itself. People looked different, and it was hard for Steve to pin point exactly how outside of hair styles and fashion, but the differences were there. He tried to draw what he was seeing, but he failed, over and over, until he gave up and returned to drawing the concrete landscape around him. Modern people, it seemed, were a step too far for him to understand. 

Steve had “caught up” with everyone from his past, thanks to reports that Agent Hill dropped off at his temporary apartment. Peggy was still alive, code-named “M” and working as a consultant at the highest levels of British intelligence despite being nearly 93 years old, but Steve could not work up the courage to call her. But then, neither had she tried to contact him. She knew where he was, but she had not reached out to him. He respected her decision because he understood that for her, Steve was a lifetime ago. 

He curled up at night in the small bed, his apartment larger than the one he had left behind by joining the Army in 1943 but no less empty. This time, Bucky was not coming home on leave. Steve didn't even want to see the new version of Greenwich Village, whether it was still bohemian and gay or not, so he stayed in at night. He also stayed hopelessly awake, staring at the ceiling, reliving Bucky's fall and the way Howard had comforted him and the kiss Peggy gave him before he (for all intents and purposes) died in the ice. 

He and his entire world had been erased and replaced in the blink of an eye. Howard, Col. Phillips, and all of the Howling Commandos were long since dead. Their children and grandchildren lived on, oblivious to the story of Steve Rogers outside of the mythology of Captain America. It did not feel like there was much of Steve Rogers left at all. 

When Fury eventually, predictably showed up with an “impossible mission” for him, it was too easy to fall back into old (recent) habits in lieu of sitting around mourning for days on end. Steve became Captain America with the ease of practice and a private sense of desperation because it was the only familiar thing he had left in a world changed beyond recognition. 

All that was missing was a red, white, and blue suit; eventually, he got that too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in between the last chapter and this one, insert the whole Avengers movie. As with MMtY, I don't see the point of writing any of that since I'm not changing anything that happened. 
> 
> And as you can expect from any fic I write, COULSON LIVES, okay? :D

Steve stood over Coulson’s hospital bed. The man himself looked up blearily at Steve, his skin still sallow and his eyes gaunt from pain and drugs. It had been three weeks since the Chitauri invasion, and barely over a month since Steve had been pulled from the ice, but this was the first time Steve actually felt better about living in the future. If nothing else, medicine had advanced enough to bring a good man back from death. 

“The Avengers?” Steve asked, trying not to smile.

“Fan. Always…a fan.” Phil almost smiled back, the canula out of his nose blocking it a little as he gasped through talking, words slow and awkward. 

“You know that I based Hawkeye on Bucky Barnes, right?” Steve leaned against the raised bed rail. Phil was unconscious more than he wasn’t most days, but this was the first conversation where he looked like he was actually present for it. 

Phil gave him a short nod. “He had…he had the name before I…found him.” Phil took a deep breath that was painful to watch. "Gave me the idea…for the rest…" He gave Steve a hopeless smile. "They fit?"

Steve wondered if Director Fury had known the precedent for all the code names when Phil had presented them. “I think they all fit pretty well. Although we’re missing a Scarlet Witch.”

Phil blinked at him for a moment, then smiled again. “Pep…Pepper Potts.”

Steve laughed at that, because he could see it. Pepper wasn’t quite as curvy as the pin-up Steve had once drawn for Bucky, but she had style and wit and was a very beautiful woman. If Steve wasn’t still thinking so much about Peggy, and if Pepper had not been Tony Stark’s girl, then Steve figured things might be different for both of them. He could fantasize a little about it without shame, he thought. He was only human.

Agent Barton came in carrying a coffee and stopped, looking surprised to see Steve there. Natasha had told Steve about Coulson and Barton, that they were “together,” and Steve had almost laughed at her uncomfortable attempts to try to explain the concept of male lovers to him. As if that had not happened in his day, as if Steve himself hadn’t spent time at the bathhouses. And then he realized that of course, she had no way of knowing either. 

It was his first clue that history did not remember everything. 

The difference to him was not Coulson and Barton having a relationship, but that everyone around them knew and accepted that fact. Barton was treated as if he was an actual relative by the medical staff both at SHIELD (when he was there) and at the tower. Steve had tried to "go with the flow" (as Agent Sitwell suggested) but he was pretty sure that he was not doing a good job of that, overall. 

“Hey,” Barton said cautiously. He was still a little reserved around Steve. He was not even cleared for duty, being hauled through the wringer because of his actions while under Loki’s control. Natasha promised Steve that Barton would be exonerated, but it was frustrating for everyone in the meantime. Barton spent most his days (when not working out, practicing at the range, or being interrogated by SHEILD), by Coulson’s bed. 

“I heard our boy was awake, and decided to drop by.” Steve smiled warmly, hoping that would put Barton at ease. “We’re talking about the Amazing Avengers.”

Barton rolled his eyes at Coulson, who smiled weakly back at him. “I told him not to name everybody after characters in that stupid old comic book.”

Coulson jerked a little and Steve’s eyebrows shot up. Barton’s eyes went wide. “Oh hell, you wrote that comic book, Jesus fuck, I totally forgot that. Uh, sorry? I mean, I’m sure it’s a great comic book, for its, uh, time.” Clint cringed as he sat down in a chair. “Sorry.”

Coulson wore an expression that clearly said life would be easier for him if he had actually died. Steve had to laugh. “It’s okay, agent. I know it’s not high art. I mostly wrote it to get the credit for it. My portfolio was pretty thin, and comic books were starting to get popular.” 

Barton cocked his head. “Was that before Superman?”

Steve sighed. His apparently _eternal_ nemesis: Superman. “Yes, about a year before.”

“Huh.” Barton sipped his coffee and looked over at Coulson. “Hey babe, you look tired. Go to sleep.” 

“Shuddup,” Coulson mumbled, but he was already drifting away on the drugs and his body’s exhaustion. 

They watched as Coulson went lax, his chest rising and lowering with his breaths. He had only been off the respirator for a week, and seeing him breathe for himself was still novel for them. Barton looked over at Steve.

“It means a lot to him, you coming by to visit. Thanks.”

“He’s a brave soldier and a good man. I’m glad he made it, even if we didn’t know that at the time.” Steve frowned, remembering Fury’s lies, but left the matter at that. He had said his peace to Fury, in between Tony Stark yelling like a mad man and Pepper Potts threatening lawsuits. It had been a dramatic day when Coulson’s survival had been revealed. 

“You can call me Clint, you know.” Clint looked up at him through exhausted eyes. “Instead of ‘agent.’ I never know who you’re talking to, we’re all agents here.”

Steve held out his hand. “Thanks, Clint. Call me Steve.”

Clint gave his hand a firm, brisk shake. “Yeah, I don’t think so, Cap. Phil would probably smack me for being disrespectful of an American icon.”

Steve smiled again. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.”

“Keep telling yourself that when the paparazzi hit,” Clint said wearily.

“The what?”

“Ask Stark.”

For a blinding moment, Steve thought of Howard, before he realized that Clint meant _Tony_ Stark. He nodded. “Has he been here?”

“Yeah, every day. Comes in just long enough to annoy the shit out of me, then leaves.”

“Not like it’s far out of his way,” Steve commented, hoping for neutral territory. He and Tony Stark were still sparking like flint and sometimes their interactions were less friendly and more barbed. He was coming around to actually liking and respecting Tony Stark but that had not translated into friendship. It was still too weird for Steve to remember that Tony was Howard’s son, and he was nearly fifteen years older than Howard had been when Steve had last seen him. 

For Steve, laying with Howard was still a recent memory, not something 70+ years in the past. He couldn’t quite look Howard’s son in the eyes when he thought of that, which was pretty often if only because Tony held so much of his father in him. 

It was awkward. 

Clint missed Steve’s discomfort and just nodded, still staring at Coulson. “Honestly? I’m glad he offered. SHIELD medical is good but this?” Clint waved around at the incredibly high-tech and luxurious surroundings of the medical wing in Stark Tower. “This is better.” 

“Not really surprising. Seems having the best technology available is a Stark hand-me-down.” Steve leaned against the wall, shoving his hands into this pockets. It was nice to relax a bit and talk as normal soldiers with someone who wasn’t treating him like Captain America. 

“Whoa, yeah, you worked with Daddy Stark.” Clint looked thoughtful. “Tony much the same?”

Steve nodded. “Yep. Although…Howard didn’t come from money. He had that nouveau riche attitude, always trying to prove something.”

Clink snickered. “So pretty much exactly the same.” 

“No. Tony…Tony acts like he’s got a lot to prove, but not about money. That, he takes it for granted. It’s not the same. Sorry, I’m not explaining it well.”

Clint sipped his coffee again. “No, I get it. Tony’s got to prove himself, justify his existence. Always has, from the reports. No offense to your friend Howard but I don’t think he put much effort into being Tony’s father.”

“Howard was a good man with a drive to do what was right. I believe he loved Tony, even if maybe he wasn’t good at showing it,” Steve snapped. 

“Okay.” Clint raised a hand in surrender.

Steve sighed. “Sorry. Just…I know Howard never planned on kids, not really.”

“Huh. That explains a lot.” Clint sighed. "Probably part of Tony's grudge match with you."

"I wasn't aware we were in a grudge match." Steve leaned against the wall again, glad to be off the topic of Howard but not liking the tone of Clint's comment. "We have our differences but we've mended fences and are moving forward. We're teammates. I don't appreciate what you're implying."

"Look, Stark's…Tony's got daddy issues. Everyone knows it, even Tony. His father idolized you, was part of the machine that kept the Captain America myth going all these years. You ever think about how hard it would be for a kid to grow up in your shadow?"

"It wasn't like that."

"Yeah, it was. You were in the ice when Tony was born and raised, you have no idea the kind of man Daddy Stark became."

"I read the file," Steve glared at Clint, who didn't act like he noticed Steve's displeasure with the topic. 

Clint rubbed an eyebrow, looking over at Phil. "What I know doesn't come from Tony's _file_. It comes from the fact that I'm about ten years younger than he is. Don't ever tell Tony this but when I was 15? I was a huge Tony Stark fan. I idolized him there for a while; hell most guys did, he was the shit."

"What?" Steve shook his head. 

"To a kid like me, Tony's life was unbelievable: rich, smart, only child, best schools, hottest girls, coolest clothes. Every week there was a new magazine out talking about the latest party he threw in Monte Carlo, the newest hot starlet he was banging." Clint leaned back in the chair with a lazy smile. "I don't know about you but when I was a horny teen that kind of sounded like the promised land."

Steve coughed pointedly, feeling the blush creep up to his ears. "I think I know what you mean," he said, remember his first time with the traveling shoe salesman. Had he only been sixteen at the time? He could barely remember, amid everything in his life that had happened since. 

Clint barked out a laugh, then covered his mouth when Phil stirred a little in his sleep. Clint spoke again a little more quietly. "See, Tony's whole life has played out in public. You read the file; sometime, stop by the library and check out his biographies. He's got nearly a dozen, all unofficial, all mostly tabloid fodder. The first one was published right after his father died, when Tony was, what, 21? Who gets a biography about them at 21? " Clint sighed. "Anyway, my point: you talked about Tony having something to prove, and I'm telling you that the person he never got to prove himself to was _your good friend_ Howard. You show up all perfect and everything—"

"I'm hardly perfect." Steve scowled. 

"Sure. Right. Anyway, you show all perfect and everything, and Tony hates you. But he can't hate you, because you're totally perfect."

"I'm not perfect."

"So now he's all confused, because he wants to like the guy he's spent most of his life hating on principle because his father _always liked you more_."

Steve cringed. Clint snapped his fingers, acknowledging the direct hit.

"Even if you're right, we're getting along much better now." Steve stood up straight and looked over at Phil. 

"Yeah, power to the team and all that." Clint sipped his coffee. "Just don't expect smooth sailing, that's all I'm saying. Tony doesn't really know what to do with you." Clint slumped back in on himself a little, his expression shuttered. "It's complicated, with him, in ways you might, uh, you might not understand."

"Such as?" Steve lifted an eyebrow, pinning Clint down with his gaze. 

Clint cleared his throat. "Nat explained to you about, uh, me and Phil?"

Steve blinked at the non-sequitur. "Yes."

"Good. Good." Clint sat up straight in the chair. "Glad we had this talk."

Clint went quiet and stared at Phil as if he could animate the man with the power of his mind. Seeing it as the polite dismissal it was, Steve took the elevator from the medical floor up to his apartment. Everyone acted surprised that Tony was the driving force behind putting the whole team in the tower, but Steve thought it made sense. He had spent the last two years (of the life he actually remembered living) sleeping, eating and fighting with the Howling Commandos. They would not have been half as effective a unit if they had all gone their separate ways after every mission. Friendships were forced but also forged under the circumstances of proximity and battle, and while Steve didn’t miss bunking down on bare floors in bombed out buildings with twenty stinking, exhausted men, he did appreciate having everyone under one roof. 

The fact that it was sometimes weird to be in such close proximity to Howard's son just made it all that more confusing for Steve.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Wednesday, and a chapter is due! Unfortunately I'm getting ready to head out of town so I don't have time just now to answer comments on the last chapter -- this is what I get for procrastinating -- and I apologize for that. Hope you enjoy this chapter, though! <3

The following months were a time of slow congealing for the team, which was rather a disgusting image but Steve honestly thought it fit, because they were not a puzzle with neatly-fitting joints and they were not not a family with blood ties to cover the rough patches. They were an odd, mismatched group of superheroes trying to work together and live together and at best it felt like they were firming up into something nearly solid. So as slightly repulsive metaphors went, it was accurate. Steve thought Bruce would appreciate it, in any case.

They were not regularly called in by SHIELD or the government, so they only "worked" about twice a month. The rest of the time they trained together and separately did whatever else they did in their _real_ lives. Which, for Steve, was drawing. He liked hanging out at the little cafe with the sweet waitress which was only a block from the Tower. The waitress, Beth, was a fan and after thanking him for saving her life she set about scaring off anyone who tried to get near him so that he could enjoy his coffee and his sketchbook in peace. She performed her self-appointed task with a ferocious and somewhat frightening zeal that reminded Steve of Secret Service agents he had met. He thought that maybe she missed her calling, and toyed with the idea of tipping Phil off to her talents. 

"Huh. I forget you were good at that," Tony said, leaning over Steve's shoulder. He was dressed in his trademark 'incognito' style, which was for him a baseball cap and a poofy winter parka that had seen better days. Beth glared at Tony from where she was serving someone else, but Steve shook his head, letting her know it was okay for her to relax. 

"Thanks, Tony, that means so much to me, coming from you."

"Ow, I'm hurt." Tony sat down jauntily, looking anything but chastised. "No really, you're good. I know that. I've seen your work, I just forgot about it. Your career as an illustrator isn't really germane to the whole Captain America shtick, is it?"

"You've seen my work?" Steve asked, horrified, as visions of a baby Tony Stark playing with Tijuana bibles danced in his mind's eye.

"Sure. Medical illustrations and dime novel covers, right? And that comic book. No offense, Cap, that was horrible."

"And yet, you still used the name Iron Man." Steve smirked.

"From the _song_ , from the _song_." Tony waved his hands around. He was far more expressive, physically, than Howard, and Steve enjoyed watching Tony's dramatics. At least, he did when it came to inconsequential things like the weather and _Amazing Avengers_. In the middle of battle, though, it was always infuriating. 

Steve laughed. "It's okay. I knew it wasn't great, that wasn't the point. I was trying to build up a versatile portfolio, and my publisher owed me a favor, so he printed the comics." He sighed, closing his sketchbook. "Up until Pearl Harbor, I expected to be an illustrator my whole life. I didn't have anything else going for me."

Tony studied him, sipping his coffee delicately. His high-class upbringing came out in the oddest moments when he ate or discussed subjects like philosophy and art, and it always threw Steve a little. Part of him always expected the miner's son (grandson) to appear. 

Tony fiddled with the cup. "It is still hard to remember that Pearl Harbor is something you actually remember, not just read about in a book or saw in a movie."

"That was a horrible, horrible movie and—"

"Relax!" Tony laughed, his whole face lighting up. "We're all in agreement with that. _Tora Tora Tora_ , though, now that was a good movie."

Steve nodded, still amazed by the way the movie had dramatized something Steve never expected to _see_. Bruce explained how dated it was, and compared to other movies Steve understood what he was talking about, but that did not lessen the impact it had on Steve at all. "True."

Tony nudged him with his foot. "So what are you drawing down here?"

"People, sometimes. Angles, buildings, weather — just trying to capture moments, practice, get back in shape. During the war I drew a little but not often."

"The war sketchbooks," Tony said, nodding, his expression solemn.

"The what?"

"Nothing. Never mind." Tony sat up, and Steve could see the wheels turning in his mind. "What you need is an art studio." 

"Tony, no—"

"Like you even use that third bedroom. Don't worry, I can probably renovate it without you noticing."

"No. Tony, no—"

"Jarvis, get my architect. Have him come by the Tower, tell him we're renovating. Small job, but it's for Steve." Tony was talking into his phone.

Steve rubbed his face. Tony was adorable, like a dog eager to please, when he got on a track of trying to do something for someone. He had been as excited as a kid on Christmas the day he gave Clint his own archery range-slash-obstacle-course. Sighing, Steve sat back in his chair and watched Tony. 

He was handsome, very similar to his father in some ways, but different enough not to be a copy. Tony's mother was present in his leaner features, his fuller lips, his large eyes. He was a devilishly handsome man, and before Steve realized it he had his sketchpad in his hand and was quickly marking out the lines of Tony's face, the set of his shoulders, the quirk of his mouth. It was a familiar, comforting moment, with Tony already sidetracked by Jarvis into some other discussion while Steve nursed his coffee and tried to capture the essence of the handsome man sitting next to him.

"Avengers assemble," Tony broke into Steve's thoughts, his face blank. He tucked the phone in his pocket and stood up. "C'mon, Cap, SHIELD just sent out the signal."

On cue, Steve's phone buzzed in his pocket. Within moments they were jogging towards the tower, and soon they were suited up and running onto the Quinjet to get carried to Boston where, Coulson told them dryly, HYDRA had pulled a wonderfully complex and stupid attack involving hostages and a cranky tentacled machine splashing around in Boston Harbor.

By the time they showed up, the crisis was not quite in full swing, as far as Steve could tell. He coordinated with Coulson to get the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man over to contain the strange tentacled machine, then set himself and the Widow on rescuing the hostages from the dock-side warehouse. Hawkeye was trailing them, somewhere within sight but high up out of the way, to cover their six and read out the situation as they got closer to their marks. 

Even with his own physical abilities making him quiet on his feet, it was always eerie for Steve to trail the Widow, who moved with as much notice as a breeze of air. She paused and motioned for him to stop as she crouched down, gun drawn, to peer around a corner. 

"Hey!" Hawkeye's exclamation was so quiet over the comm that Steve almost didn't catch it, but that didn't matter when he felt the arrow shoot through his shoulder, pitching him forward straight onto the Widow. Pain blossomed in Steve's mind and he bit his lip as he tried instinctively to roll away from what was hurting him. 

The Widow had moved faster than he could track and was stretched out over him, hissing in his ear. "Don't move!" 

Steve stilled, the pain from the arrow sticking out from both his front and back throbbing, but he could already feel his body starting to heal. "Pull it out!" He growled through clinched teeth.

The Widow shook her head, then seemed to remember the problem. "I can't yank it through, the arrow tip will rip you up going in reverse." She got out a knife but Steve was out of patience, because _Hawkeye had fucking shot him._ He reached up and with a snap of his fingers broke the arrow tip off. Natasha gave him a short, annoyed look but then grabbed the shaft and yanked it. The muscle that had already started healing around it ripped anew and Steve held back a howl of agony. 

The following few minutes were a riot of nausea and pain as his body warred with itself to heal up from the wound while the rest of the Avengers tried to salvage the operation without (more) bloodshed. Hawkeye had dropped off the comms after shooting Steve, for which Steve was grateful because he was in the right mood to cuss the guy out but good. Somehow, while Steve tried to crawl up off the ground, Phil and Natasha settled everything with the HYDRA agents holding the hostages, and Steve found himself being grabbed and carried up and away by a strangely tight-lipped Thor.

"Put me down, Thor!" Steve shouted over the wind rushing his face.

"No, I cannot. I have my orders from Son of Coul. We are going to the tower!" Thor shouted back. 

Steve knew a losing battle when he was in one while several thousand feet in the air, so he shut up and let Thor fly them home. When they landed, Steve pushed Thor away and went to change out of his bloodied uniform. After a hot shower, his shoulder was still sore but he was feeling back to normal, so he dressed in civvies to crash the debriefing Jarvis told him was underway in the Avengers Conference room. 

He walked in and everyone went quiet. Phil looked angry, but Steve could not get a bead on the rest of the team. In lieu of conversation, he zeroed in on Hawkeye. "You have an excuse, Agent Barton?"

"Yes, I do," Barton snapped, leaning back in his chair with the obvious intent of not saying anything else about it. Steve stomped around the table and yanked Barton out of his chair, holding him in the air by his vest and shaking him while everyone else started yelling.

"You don't miss. You never miss. You shot me on _purpose_!" 

"Hey! Stop it!" Tony yanked at Steve's right arm with both hands. What bothered Steve, though, was that Hawkeye was just hanging limply in Steve's grip. He looked angry but he was not fighting back or denying the accusation. Steve lowered him slowly and let Tony pull him over to a chair. 

"What the hell is going on?"

"We don't know, that's the problem." Tony sighed, retaking his own seat. "Barton just explained what happened and we were talking about what the implications of an attempted assassination were, and then you walked in acting all butch. A good look on you, by the way—"

"Thank you, Stark," Coulson broke in. "And thanks for bringing up what we agreed not to mention to the Captain." Coulson's eyes were dark and furious. 

Steve held up a hand for quiet. "Was the attempted assassination an inside job? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like one of my own team shot me. I want to know why."

Natasha huffed softly. "The Winter Soldier."

Barton's hand slapped on the table. "We don't know that! We don't!"

"I can't believe you think an antique cold war relic is something we should worry about," Tony added derisively. 

Natasha's posture went stiffer. "I saw a shadow. I know it's him." 

"Someone care to explain to the rest of the class?" Bruce finally spoke up through chewing, sounding tired and looking the worse for wear. He had a pile of power bars in front of him and was slowly working through them . 

Coulson sighed. "The reason Barton shot you was because he was out of time."

"What?" Steve twisted to look at Clint.

"You had a laser tag on your head. I know you've got super healing powers but I'm not sure we want to test whether you can regrow most of your brain back or not. I had a micro-second to act, and I knew my shot would be less lethal than his." He glanced at Natasha. "Whoever he is."

Steve blinked at the information. He glanced over at Tony, who looked pale and shaken and angry, then at the rest of his team, one by one. They were all upset, he could see it then. "So someone had a rifle scope tag on me?"

"Yes." Coulson nodded. "In fact once you were down, the entire operation folded like a house of cards." He waited for Steve to catch on.

"It was a set up, to bring me out into the open."

"You go out in the open every morning for a twenty mile run," Tony snapped, shifting in the chair restlessly. "No, this was to set it up so it didn't look like an assassination, to make it plausible that maybe you just died in battle."

Natasha pointed at him. "A classic tactic of the Winter Soldier!"

"For fuck's sake, Nat." Barton leaned back in his chair and refused to look at any of them. 

"I still don't know who the Winter Soldier is," Bruce said, swallowing as he talked and ripping open another power bar. He paused and then tossed one to Steve, who suddenly realized he was ravenous. Healing from major injuries always took the vim and vigor out of him. 

Coulson finally sat down at his place at the head of the table. While it was circular and officially had no "head" position, it was a role that seemed to gravitate towards Coulson. "The Winter Soldier started showing up in the 1950s, and appeared irregularly after that. He was more of a blunt force instrument of the Soviet Union, performing 'impossible' assassinations and other wet work. Every few years word would leak out of the USSR that the Winter Solider had been activated, and often some head of state would die soon after." Phil frowned. "Or a government would fall, or, at least once, a major corporation would collapse." He glanced over at Natasha, who nodded tersely. "During the height of the cold war, the USSR created a program called the Red Room, a training program for spies and assassins that was heavy on brainwashing and genetic engineering. It was said to have originated with work on the Winter Soldier."

Steve saw where this was going, and grimaced. "The super soldier serum."

"Possibly," Coulson agreed, although he was clearly not happy about it. "No one is really sure. In fact that's the main problem we had then, and still have today: we don't know if the Winter Soldier is a man, or a title given to different men over the years, or is even a code name for a sub-organization."

"He's a man," Natasha snapped. "He trained me."

Barton folded forward and put his face in his hands. "Nat."

Steve looked over at Phil, whose expression had morphed into complete shock. It was not a good look on him. 

Natasha picked up the narrative. "The Red Room never shut down, not even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. I was placed in the program as a child, I don't know how young I was, but nothing changed for us after the USSR was dissolved. We kept training. And every few years, the Winter Soldier was brought in to train us, evaluate us, and kill us."

"What?" Steve exclaimed before he could stop himself.

"We trained with him, but we also trained _against_ him. He went easy on us, his mission was not to eliminate valuable assets, but if we messed up badly enough…he showed no mercy." She pursed her lips and looked out the window. "He was not a young man, but not old either. But he was the same man every time, and he never grew older even though we did. He told me once about Cuba before Castro; he was there, in the 1950s. He was _there_. He never dies," she finished reverently, looking off into the distance. 

"For years we have canvassed every contact within our reach, and SHIELD has never come up with half the information you just dropped here, Agent Romanoff." Coulson was furious. 

"So write me up, Phil. I don't care. It's my story, mine to tell. I'm telling it now. The Winter Soldier has not been on the radar since before 9/11 and the last time I saw him, I was fourteen years old. But he's back, I know he is, I recognize his work. He's been given a job, and he will not rest until it is done."

"And you're saying his job is to assassinate me?" Steve asked, breaking into the fight. 

Natasha looked at him, and for the first time since he had met her Steve could see deep, honest pain in her eyes, although he could not tell if it was for him or for her former trainer. "Yes."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, still with me trying to catch up on replying to comments! So sorry! But here, have some fic? :D

After the assassination attempt, it took everyone a few days to settle down. Steve reviewed the very bare-bones file SHIELD had on the Winter Soldier, which didn't do much to tell Steve anything concrete about who or what they thought he was outside of what Natasha had already revealed at the debriefing. The only important thing that Steve gleaned from it was that every government on the planet really didn't want to mess with the Winter Soldier in any way, shape or form.

That paranoia bled over into Steve's team, and there wasn't much he could do about it since it was at least prudent to stay on guard. Tony spent 24 hours reinforcing security at the tower, claiming that "it's not paranoia if they really are out to kill you" which Steve was hard pressed to argue. Bruce was particularly jumpy, although he managed to keep the Other Guy from showing up. Phil had grabbed Natasha and Clint and taken them to SHIELD headquarters, where Steve suspected they got a grilling from Fury for with-holding information. Steve sympathized with both parties on that one, understanding Natasha's need for privacy about her past and Fury's need to know as much about the Winter Soldier as possible. Steve was comfortable as the team leader, but he was sometimes very glad that he was not the last word in such matters. When Clint and Natasha showed back up the following day, they both looked furious and were not even talking directly to each other. Thor, meanwhile, was pissed off on account of Steve's honor being besmirched by the "cowardly wretch's refusal to meet honorably on the battlefield" and kept New York in a deep gloomy thunderstorm for three days until Phil tersely asked for a break in the weather.

No one was handling the development very well, and Steve hoped that was not an indication of things to come regarding the Winter Soldier. 

In protest against his team's hypersensitivity, Steve did not stop his usual routine. Tony had been right: if anyone wanted to take Steve out easily, he was an obvious target between his daily run in the morning and all the photo ops he did on behalf of SHIELD, the Army, and various charities. Tony had threatened to tail him wearing the Iron Man suit, but Steve put paid to that idea with a curt negative. He did not need baby sitting, and he was not going to be coddled. The assassin—whomever he was—was going to lay low until another opportunity showed up to take Steve out during an actual battle, and Steve was confident enough in that knowledge to keep to his usual routine. 

That did not mean he wasn't feeling anxious himself, so he finished that morning's 20 mile run by jogging up all 47 flights of stairs to the common floor. JARVIS announced his progress at every landing with an amused tone, and wouldn't shut up even when Steve told him to which only proved that JARVIS was, in fact, a Tony Stark creation. 

“Oh, Steve, good morning.” Pepper gave him a wide eyed look as Steve walked into the kitchen, still feeling damp and wrung out. She blinked and looked away quickly, back down at her tablet. There was a lone cup of coffee next to her. 

“Good morning. Breakfast?”

“Oh, no, please don’t bother.” She didn’t look up. Steve had seen dames act that way around Bucky enough to know the signs, but he was still unnerved by it. The chorus girls in the USO had been brazen and forward, not polite and shy, and it still threw Steve when a lady like Pepper showed any prurient interest in him. 

He wasn’t complaining about it, though. 

“I’m fixing myself a big heaping plate of eggs. I can throw a couple in for you. You should eat more.”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Are you actually telling me I’m too skinny?”

“Most dames are these days. It’s nuts. What happened to the gams?” Steve stopped, realizing what he was saying with a blush. He shoved his face into the refrigerator. “Eggs! Here go. Lots and lots of eggs. And cheese? We need cheese. You want some juice?”

Pepper was laughing quietly, her whole face lit up. Steve smiled at her sheepishly, his arms full of groceries.

“Eggs would be lovely, Steve. Thank you.” She hid her mouth behind her hands, still snickering.

He sighed, setting up to cook. “Sorry. I still loose my mind around beautiful ladies.”

“I cannot express to you how endearing that is,” Pepper said solemnly. “The women of America thank you.”

Steve shrugged and got to cooking. The kitchenette in his apartment was fully stocked but Steve had gotten in the habit of fixing his breakfast in the large communal kitchen. He thought it was more like a front parlor with cooking equipment shoved into it, but it was a strangely comforting mix. His team came and went, orbiting around the kitchen, eating on the fly or fixing a snack and flopping on a couch (there were three) or cooking a real meal (mostly, Bruce). He was never alone for too long when he was there. 

“You know, actually…Steve?” Pepper said, looking at him thoughtfully.

“Yeah?” 

“This is a nice coincidence. The Office of Women’s Heath is starting up a big PSA campaign on eating disorders, and was asking to get Natasha in on it. But I think you might be a good choice too.”

“PSA?”

“Public service announcement.”

Steve stirred the eggs in the pan. He always cooked a dozen at a time with half a stick of butter, so he figured he was a good choice for talking about eating. “Sure, done plenty of those when I was with the USO. What’s an eating disorder?”

Pepper took a deep breath and then went into a long, interesting but depressing lecture on body image, eating disorders and women’s health. Steve wasn’t surprised. Even Peggy had complained a lot about her hips, which Steve thought was insane because she had the best hips he’d ever seen. “That’s messed up. You want me to go on television and talk about nice gams? I’m your guy.” He plated her eggs and shoved them towards her, throwing a handful of cheese on top. She stared at the pile of food.

“You really think I’m too skinny, don’t you?” 

“You are not too skinny. You are perfect, I keep telling you this, but you are always talking about your butt. Trust me, I am the expert when it comes to Pepper Pott’s ass, and it is perfect.” Tony buzzed in, coffee already in hand. Steve figured he probably had a coffee machine in his bed room. 

“I have a white-girl ass,” Pepper said mournfully, shoving a forkful of eggs into her mouth. 

“A beautiful, perfect white-girl ass.” Tony kissed her cheek, making her smile. He was dressed in a suit and looking manicured, so Steve assumed he had a meeting that day. 

Steve smiled, sitting down to his own breakfast. He enjoyed watching them together. Tony was aggravating but he always managed to say the right things to Pepper, something Steve had never quite managed to do with Peggy. He was still a little sore about her shooting at him that one time, even if he deserved it a little. 

“You are grinning, and it looks surprisingly evil. Mischievous, even. It’s a good look for you.” Tony was staring at him, the intensity of his focus jarring Steve from his thoughts.

“About Peggy. Just…something that happened once.”

Tony actually looked uncomfortable for a second, turning his attention back to his coffee.

“A good memory?” Pepper asked in between bites. 

“She shot me,” Steve smiled. Pepper and Tony looked at him blankly. “No! I had the shield, actually, I had just picked out my shield, and she had seen me, uh, canoodling with a pretty sergeant and…well, Peggy has a temper.” 

Tony grinned. “So she shot you for kissing another girl?” He turned to Pepper. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Pepper patted his cheek. “If that was going to happen, I would have done it in 2005.”

“We weren’t dating in 2005.”

“I don’t think Steve was dating Peggy when she shot him, either.” 

“I wasn’t,” Steve confirmed through a mouthful of eggs. 

“Wait, you were kissing a pretty girl who wasn’t Peggy? You scoundrel! We’ve totally missed this part of Captain America’s history. This is news, right here, Pepper we need a press release.” He tugged at her sleeve like a little boy begging for a cookie.

“We need to go downstairs to the budget meeting,” Pepper said, standing up and wolfing down the last of the eggs in a decidedly un-ladylike way. Steve admired that. 

“You always say the sexiest things, except now, because that wasn’t sexy at all. Redo?”

“No. Meeting, now. Unless you really want the R&D budget slashed by 4% as Riley is pushing for.” 

“That man lives to antagonize me,” Tony growled, slugging his coffee and stalking out the door. Pepper grinned in triumph. 

“Good luck?” Steve offered.

“Oh, we’re having pizza tonight, don’t worry,” Pepper said, her voice and mannerisms almost predatory (which Steve firmly told himself was not doing anything to arouse his manhood at all). 

Steve didn’t see anything particularly celebratory about pizza delivery, but it was apparently what Tony did every time he “took one for the team” as he put it. Not that Steve was arguing about it, because he always got his own large Hawaiian style pie. As Thor kept saying, the 21st century truly had a vast treasure of culinary delights. 

“I guess Tony and Pepper were here?” Bruce said, coming into the kitchen with an empty mug in his hand.

“You heard them?”

“No, you’re just wearing that goofy grin again.”

Steve froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“You tend to get a little starry eyed whenever they are in the room,” Bruce clarified, digging through a cabinet filled with a mind-boggling array of teas. He glanced over at Steve. “Oh! Hey, no, don’t worry. I don’t think they notice it.”

“Uh.”

“They are a good looking couple, I don’t blame you. Pepper’s gorgeous and Tony is…well, he’s Tony.” Bruce smiled slyly at him. 

“You?” Steve tried to get his brain back online.

“Oh, I’m working on reinstating a previous relationship, if she’ll have me. We’ll see. Tricky business there. Doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how attractive Tony and Pepper are.”

“Right.” Steve nodded. 

Bruce paused. “Uh, it’s okay, right? That I can admire both of them?”

Steve stared at him for a second before the comment sunk in. “It’s…very okay.”

Bruce’s eyebrows went up but he did not pursue the conversation after that. Bruce deftly steered things into safe waters, discussing a new project SHIELD asked him to work on, and expressing interest in measuring Steve’s physical strength. Steve agreed to some testing later and then ducked out, heading to his apartment for a shower and some research. 

He had been brought up to date on politics and technology by both his team and the tutors from SHIELD. He found most of the technology intuitive, seeing a lot of the things Howard had predicted coming true in his hands. Phones had gone from being something on the wall in the parlor that the whole rooming house shared to small cards tucked into pockets or purses, but they were still phones. Texting was just an upgrade to telegraph messages. Movies were still movies, only better. It all boiled down to “more of the same” in Steve’s opinion. The only really unexpected item he had come across was not a specific thing, but the World Wide Web itself. It was amazing, like having an encyclopedia and a whole news stand at the tip of his fingers, 24 hours a day. He shied away from what they called “social networking” because it was a little overwhelming, but the rest of it he had found incredibly useful.

He sat down at his desktop and pulled up Google, his second favorite site after the New York Times. He had vowed never to google himself, mostly because Coulson begged him not to, and he did not intend to start. Instead, he typed in “Everard Baths.” He had never thought to look up the history of the gay landmarks of his youth because he figured that such things were not talked about in 2012 any more than they were in 1942. Nothing about queers had come up in his ongoing history and culture classes with the SHIELD experts, and it never crossed Steve's mind to ask. 

Steve had known gay couples who were flagrant about their relationship, and of course fairies who weren't subtle about anything, but Bruce's casual attitude had been _different_ from what Steve knew and he could not quite place how. He had assumed that the brazen relationship between Coulson and Barton had been given leeway because of Fury, but Steve was beginning to realize that some cultural mores he thought were written in stone had changed. He found out pretty quickly that he was right.

Starting with Everard, link to link, working backwards sometimes from events that had happened or words he did not understand, he pieced together the history of gays in America. Most of it was predictably awful and heartbreaking, and the events surrounding the AIDS epidemic made him sick to his stomach. But then things starting turning around through the 1990s, up to the point where there was currently a huge movement to legalize gay marriage at the Federal level. Prejudices still raged and the ideas behind concepts like ‘homosexual by birth’ and ‘transgender’ were new to him, but Steve was awed by the changes that had happened over the past century.

It suddenly occurred to him that Coulson and Barton could, possibly, actually be married themselves. Certainly when Coulson had still been in medical, the staff had treated Barton somewhat like a "husband." The idea was peculiar and odd and Steve turned it over in his mind. How different would the world have to be for him to have ever been married to Bucky? He laughed out loud, thinking of Bucky in a long, white dress, and shook his head, returning to his studies. 

Everard had closed in 1985 (Steve was not surprised by that, only by how long it had lasted in the first place) and none of the gay clubs Steve had known of in the 30s were still open. But society had come to the point where a respected, intelligent man like Dr. Banner could easily and comfortably admit being attracted to Tony Stark. 

Cautiously, against his will, Steve typed in Tony’s name. That pulled up a morass of links to news and gossip and history, so Steve went back and added “bisexual” after Tony’s name. He felt guilty doing it, as if he were accusing Tony of doing something wrong, but his thoughts turned to slush when the results popped up. 

There were dozens of pictures of Tony kissing men, men sitting on Tony’s lap, Tony sandwiched indiscriminately between men and women and drag queens. Most looked like they were taken when Tony was in his twenties and thirties (certainly before he had been kidnapped in Afghanistan) but in some, Tony looked no more than fifteen at most. An even smaller number were more recent: Tony dancing with men at fund raisers or holding hands with a popular, handsome musician at the Grammys. 

The one that Steve stopped on was a shot of Tony dancing with Pepper. There was another man behind Pepper and apparently dancing with them. Tony and the handsome man were either getting ready to kiss or just finishing, while Pepper leaned against Tony with her eyes closed, looking blissful and happy. One of her hands trailed behind her to rest on the hip of the man at her back. 

Steve felt like he was infringing on their privacy, despite the fact that the photo was up on the Internet. The caption read, “Actor Jude Law gets cozy with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts at the 2010 Maria Stark Foundation Holiday Ball!” and Steve decided that he didn’t like that sleazy guy Jude Law one bit. 

Stopping himself at the thought, Steve realized with a sudden, dreadful clarity that he had a problem, and that mooning over pictures of Tony and Pepper online was probably one step from madness. It was one thing to hold his own perversions close, quite another to spy on Tony's for less-than-honorable reasons.

Apologizing to Howard in his head, Steve shut down the computer and headed out to Bruce’s lab.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, did I have trouble with this chapter. There is a lot of conflict going on in Steve's head, and I was finding it hard to capture that without making him seem flaky. I hope I captured it.

The next few missions were small ones, surprises that seemed to come out of nowhere for the express purpose of interrupting the Avengers at dinner. Everyone was on high alert but Steve's assassin was laying low or doing something else. 

Steve was so used to being on guard for his personal safety and that of his team on missions that he forgot to be on guard against anything else. 

HYDRA's attempt to rob a bank, which turned out to be a cover for them trying to rob the safe at a nearby experimental genetics lab, nearly flattened a city block. A very popular block, or at least it was popular at 11pm at night when HYDRA moved in.

Between Coulson's operations management and Steve's field tactics, it was a short battle once the Avengers figured out what was going on. However, that was after two busy nightclubs suffered extensive damages. As Steve helped clear out debris, looking for survivors, he pulled a short, stocky drag queen up out of the mess with a grimace. She was not severely hurt but she was covered in small cuts from shattered glass and her dress was ruined. Steve smiled reassuringly at her. 

"It's okay, ma'am. I'll get you out of here."

She looked up at him uncertainly, still a little dazed, and Steve suspected she might have a slight head wound. "You're Captain America."

Steve tried to put his arm around her waist to support her, but she stumbled backwards. "Ma'am, please, I'm trying to help you."

"I'm not a ma'am. I mean, you know that, right? I mean—" She blinked at him, unsteady on her heels but holding a hand out to keep him at bay. "You're Captain America."

"Yes, I am." Steve nodded, trying his best "trust me" expression. "And this building is unstable, and we need to leave."

She shook her head. "You'd help me?"

It was Steve's turn to blink. "Of course."

"I'm a _drag queen_ , not exactly American heartland values here, sweetheart."

Steve rolled his eyes. "For pity's sake. You're enough of a lady for me." He stepped forward and hauled her into a bridal carry and walked out, passing other emergency workers who were helping other people out as quickly as possible. There had been few casualties over all, but HYDRA had blown enough support struts and beams that the building was not safe. The little drag queen started waving merrily at the first responders as they passed, and Steve had to hold back a chuckle because apparently fairies were just as outlandish in 2012 as they were in 1940.

He stepped out on the street into a wall of flashbulbs going off. The drag queen squealed unhappily. Steve tightened his hold and aimed for one of the ambulances, ignoring the way the reporters and bystanders were yelling at him. When he put her down on a stretcher, he brought one of her hands up and gently kissed the back. "Take care, ma'am."

"Oh you can do better than that!" She said and reached up, grabbing his head and yanking him down for a kiss. Steve laughed at the sloppy attempt, enjoying the light scrape of her stubble against his chin. He was mindful of all the cameras around, though, so cut it short by gently pushing her back down on the gurney. When he stood up she was grinning at him. He saluted her smartly and headed back to the building. Iron Man landed in his way. 

"Speaking from experience, you might want to wipe your mouth off after tonguing a drag queen."

"What?" Steve stared at him.

"You've got cherry red lipstick all over yourself." 

Steve pulled a wet wipe out from his utility belt (one of Bruce's suggestions, and one of the most useful things in Steve's kit; he really wished someone had thought of those things prior to the War) and wiped down his mouth, laughing. "Thanks. She was pretty stubborn."

"Yeah. You knew she was a drag queen, right?" Tony's faceplate flipped up as they walked towards the broken building.

"Tony, believe me when I say that some things are even older than I am. Yes, I knew she was a drag queen. Fairies like that are kind of hard to miss."

Tony's arm swung out and slammed into his abdomen. It wasn't enough to hurt but it winded Steve a little. "Hey! What?"

"You don't get to use that word." Tony looked furious. 

Steve replayed his comment and came up blank. "What word? What are you talking about?"

Tony leaned in, hissing. "Fairies. You don't get to say that."

Steve shoved him backwards, mostly out of confusion because he had no idea what they were arguing about. "And you do?"

Tony's head tilted and he literally snarled. "I've been bashed by every media outlet on earth from the time I was twelve, Rogers. I'm too gay for Fox News and I'm not gay enough for the Village Voice. If you want to talk shit about queers then okay, do it to my face, because at least I can fight back. You do _not_ get to play the bigot card on a drag queen who just lived through a HYDRA attack."

Remembering his lessons with the SHIELD social studies tutors about changes in language use since the 1940s ("negro" was out, "Ms." was in), Steve nodded, keeping his expression still. "Got it."

Tony studied him quietly for a moment. Around them the evacuation and rescue proceeded loudly, people running too and fro and sirens wailing as ambulances tore out to get people to hospitals. Finally Tony nodded. "Okay, yeah, I get that things used to be different."

The offhand comment finally riled Steve, tired of being coddled by a team who clearly thought he was both ignorant and naive. He poked Tony in the chest, for all the good it did through the armor, although Tony looked genuinely surprised. "And you're, what? Helping? I don't think you have any damn idea how much things have changed or stayed the same," Steve snapped. "She wasn't the first drag queen to lay one on me by surprise and she won't be last. I really don't give a damn. People can live whatever lives they want to live. In my day we called gals like her 'fairies' and it didn't mean anything, unless you were trying to beat them up—and in my neighborhood, we took care of that problem. Get it through your super-smart head that not everything I do or say is because I'm a backwards hick. I went to _war_ , Tony. I've seen a hell of a lot of the world. More than you know."

Tony stood his ground and stared up at Steve with dark, unreadable eyes. Finally he nodded again. "My bad."

"Whatever that means," Steve sighed and stomped off to get back to helping the rescue effort.

He did not think too much about the exchange until the following day when Coulson called him to his official "SHIELD/Avengers Liaison" office on the 37th floor of the tower. Coulson motioned for him to sit, then pulled a monitor over, swinging it out from the wall. 

"I know you only read the New York Times, so I suspect you missed this." Coulson tapped the screen and a recorded newsreel started playing, showing Steve's impromptu kiss with the drag queen. 

Steve groaned. "She grabbed me by surprise, what was I supposed to do, deck her?"

"Shhh." Coulson raised a finger. Surprised at the curtness, Steve sat back in the chair. 

_"The kiss was followed by a heated argument with Iron Man. Was that jealousy, Mr. Stark?"_ The reporter, a greasy looking guy wearing a loud but stylish tie, grinned as Steve's discussion with Tony played in a corner of the screen. 

The overly-made up woman next to him smirked. _"And what does this say about Captain 'America', stopping to kiss drag queens in the middle of a rescue operation?"_

The guy laughed. _"Maybe it says he doesn't get out enough?"_ They both laughed harder and Coulson froze the screen so that their grins look more like pained grimaces.

Steve shook his head. "The press used to try to start rumors about me and every chorus girl on the line, back in the USO. And I have to say, she wasn't the first fair—er, lady-guy who's tried to have a go at me. I don't care what they say, it was all harmless. Suggesting that about Tony is rude, but he's used to it, right? I don't know what you expect me to do about it." Steve crossed his legs and arms, looking out the window. 

"Understood. However, Captain America kissing drag queens is not exactly on the historical record." Coulson sighed. "I'm not sure how much you know about Stark's past—"

"I can google, Phil. I know that he's been seen around with men, and drag queens. And yes I know what the word 'hedonist' means."

Coulson looked at him with narrowed eyes. "You don't seem bothered by that."

Steve slapped his thighs. "Why does everyone treat me like a kid? I was in the Army where I led a desegregated special ops team consisting of an international roster of troops marching across Europe. Every town we walked into had a line of whores ready to do business. I was an orphan raised by relatives in Brooklyn, where the fairies and the brothels lived on the docks three blocks from my apartment. I was on my own by the time I was fifteen. I understand I've become some kind of mythical icon but trust me, under the uniform, I'm just a regular joe."

Coulson looked shell shocked for a moment before rallying. "I try to remember that, Steve, but sometimes it's difficult and I'm someone who is very familiar with your biography." He blushed a little, then cleared his throat. "What I'm getting at is that now there will be rumors about you and Stark, together. It's going to cause controversy." His expression was somber, indicating the seriousness with which he was taking the media's accusations.

For a brief moment, Steve considered telling Phil the truth. It almost felt like it would be easy to just say "I've kissed men before, I'm a pervert, I'm gay" and be done with it. The future was not perfect but it was, at least, more accepting of Steve's preferences than in his own day. But as he pulled his attention back from the window to Phil, Steve knew he was not going to do it. That part of his life was as good as dead, it died with Steve Rogers in the ice. He _was_ Captain America, that was all he really had left, and bringing down controversy and scandal on the uniform for no reason was not acceptable. Even Phil, who was in a relationship with another man himself, was worried about reporters casting aspersions of queerness onto the Avengers, and Captain America in particular. It was different for Tony, who grew up amid scandal. Steve did not have those options, he did not even deserve them. He had his place in history and it was his job to uphold a reputation that he had only a small part in making. He had his duty left to him, and that much he could at least fulfill.

"Steve?" Coulson's frown deepened.

"Am I supposed to make a public statement? I think that would only feed the gossip pages."

Coulson shook his head. "No, let the PR team handle all statements. Honestly our official stance is to ignore the innuendo, but we have to accept it's out there. Just keep it in mind, and don't get insulted if some of the more unethical reporters throw inappropriate questions at you during press junkets."

Steve rubbed his forehead. "There's nothing to get insulted about. Gossip is gossip, it's all lies and everyone knows it." He stood up. "Is there anything else?"

"No. We simply wanted you to be aware." Coulson looked displeased but Steve was simply not interested in finding out why. Instead he nodded in acceptance and excused himself. He went down to the gym floor and set up to work against the super-strength resistant boxing bags. 

He had been at it for a while, trying to blank his mind out and simply focus on the strength and form of his punches, when he heard Tony come in.

"Steve! Let's spar!"

Steve stood up straight, stilling the bag with one hand. Tony looked anxious, stripping quickly out of his business suit and grabbing a pair of sweats from his locker, sliding them on over his expensive, silky and form-fitting briefs. Steve forced himself to look somewhere else. 

"You hate sparring, Tony."

"No! I love it!" Tony buzzed over to the rack of masks and gloves, gearing up faster than Steve could walk over to the boxing ring. "It's my favorite thing!"

"Tony—"

"TONY!" Pepper marched in, be-suited with her hair pulled back into what she called her 'business bun', a slick, tight wad of hair pinned to the nap of her neck. Steve found himself looking somewhere else yet again.

"Sparring! Important Avengers business!" Tony crawled into the ring. 

Steve followed as a matter of course, but gave Pepper a look that he hoped adequately conveyed his helplessness and confusion. She just glared at Tony. 

"You're not getting out of this!"

Tony finally stopped and looked over at Pepper. "Yes, I am. This is why you are CEO, this is why I gave you the reins, so that I could get out of things like this. Man up, Pepper."

Steve found himself stepping backwards away from Tony at the look she was giving him. "If you think a little condescension is going to get you out of dealing with these lawsuits, you are very wrong."

Tony's mouth went flat. "I don't need to make a statement."

"Yes, you do." Pepper finally slumped. "I know you hate this part, but Tony, yes, you do. You have to participate in this."

"I can go—" Steve gestured at the door. 

"We're sparring." Tony snapped the words and turned on him. 

"Fine! Spar! I'm going to sit here and answer email. As soon as you decide to stop being a child, we can get back to these interrogatories." Pepper sat down in one of the chairs in the "waiting area" (which Tony called the "observation deck") and looked hatefully at her tablet. 

"You get sued a lot?" Steve asked, setting up in a defensive posture, figuring that Tony was probably wound up enough to basically throw himself into the match. He wasn't wrong; Tony drove into Steve's personal space with punches and jabs. It was fairly easy to avoid Tony's wild offense, so Steve upped the ante by swinging his leg out and taking Tony down. "Gotta watch all angles, Iron Man."

Tony muttered as he got up. As they faced off again, Tony answered his question. "All the damn time. By the law suits you'd think I never had an original idea in my life. Most get kicked out of court by my lawyers, but a few make up the chain." They exchanged some hits, Tony finally slowing down to pay attention. "Then I have to bring JARVIS in to give dates and times, but since he's not actually human his answers are not legal tender, as it were. So Pepper has to pester me about the interrogatories. It's boring and ridiculous and ugh!" Tony bowed up from a blow Steve landed on his mid-section.

"See how distracted you are? Focus." Steve stepped back and raised his bare fists again. He never geared up to spar with Tony, since they were already so mismatched. Tony growled unhappily but took the advice, and they soon fell into a hard practice. It didn't tax Steve anywhere near the way it did Tony, who had soaked through his tee-shirt within fifteen minutes, but by an hour into it Steve stripped off his tee-shirt because if there was one thing that still functioned the same as always it was his sweat glands. Tony stepped backwards and blinked at him through his face mask. "Well, that escalated quickly."

Steve was rolling his eyes when he heard the squeak from Pepper. He glanced over to see her clutching her tablet to her chest, her cheeks flushed and red. 

Stark hmmm'd next to him. "You like that, baby? Two guys getting all hot and sweaty for you? Maybe it's time I gave Jude a call and—"

Steve felt his arm snap out and slam into Tony's mask, sending him rolling. Pepper screeched incoherently and jumped up as Tony flopped awkwardly to his feet. Steve was on the verge of apologizing when Tony rushed at him, a full-body dive that slammed his shoulder into Steve's torso. He could take a hit like that without damage but it still sent Steve sprawling into the ropes, the two of them crumpled up all over each other. 

"Tony!" Pepper yelled, but it was too late. Tony was visibly furious and Steve didn't really know what they were fighting about and that kind of pissed him off. He threw Tony away from him, sending him into the ropes across the mat, but Tony's reflexes were pretty well honed from being a superhero. He bounced and spun around, landing in the middle of the mat with his fists raised. Steve walked straight into the attack, swinging hard with his weaker left, planning to hook Tony with his right and end things quickly, but Tony was fast, ducking around to try and land a jab to Steve's kidneys. 

It was a weird fight because Steve was holding back and they both knew he would win a real contest, but they kept going, Steve landing the odd and ineffective punch with Tony throwing himself into every opening in Steve's defenses that he could grab. Steve figured they could have gone on like that for hours until he swung and almost hit Pepper. He pulled his fist back hard and over balanced, giving Tony a chance to swipe at his stable leg and take him down, apparently not realizing that Pepper had materialized in the ring with them. Tony fell on him with fierce punches that Steve didn't dare try to deflect for fear of throwing them both onto Pepper, who had jumped on Tony's back and was yanking at his arms. Steve curled up defensively, figuring Tony would figure things out quickly, especially with Pepper yelling "Stop! Stop!" at the top of her lungs while trying to wrestle Tony. 

They ending up in a weird pile, Tony laid out flat perpendicularly over Steve's turtle impression with Pepper on top of them both, still yelling. "What the hell is the matter with you two? What was that? Anthony Edward Stark I'm going to kill you!" 

Tony rolled off onto his back and Pepper stumbled to her feet. Tony propped himself up on his elbows. "Steve started it."

"What did I do?" Steve asked, sitting up on his heels.

"You threw that punch out of nowhere!" 

Steve was not about to admit that it was because he did not like Tony talking about Jude Law, but he was kind of stalled on any other reason to give. Fortunately, Pepper's temper was redder than her hair. 

"I don't care! I! Don't! Care! That was some kind of grudge match!" She towered over them, her heels punching into the soft surface of the mat. 

"Admit it, Steve, you got your prim panties in a bunch when I talked dirty to Pepper. Admit it!" 

Steve grabbed at the excuse, because as dishonorable as the lie was, it was better than the truth. "You don't talk that way to a lady in public, Tony! I don't care what you do in your bedroom but you don't _talk_ about it!" 

"Fuck you, Rogers, I—"

"Shut up!" Pepper roared, the echo bouncing off the walls. Steve froze, and noticed that Tony did too. Pepper slashed the air with her hands. "Both of you! Shut up! I'm tired of this! I understand that everyone is stressed out about the mysterious assassin—"

"Not stressed." Tony laid down and crossed his arms over his chest, the thick gloves getting in the way of the gesture.

"AND we've got a PR disaster on our hands with about the drag queen—"

"Wait, what?" Steve sat up. 

"BUT I will not allow you two to go at each other like grade school ruffians!"

"Do not get Captain Righteous-Pants started about the drag queen." Tony rolled his eyes. 

Steve bounced to his feet. "Why is this a problem?" Steve realized he was yelling but even the startled reactions from both Pepper and Tony did not slow him down. "Why does anyone care? It's not a big deal! A drag queen kissed me, so what? Maybe I liked it! Maybe I didn't give a damn! This isn't a fucking problem!" 

Tony had shuffled to his feet and was muscling Pepper behind him, but they were staring at him in complete shock. 

Steve stepped backwards, his blood roaring in his ears. He knew his skin was bright red and probably looked frighteningly like a red version of the Hulk, so he turned his back and rested his hands on the ropes in front of him, leaning forward and trying to catch his breath. Fear and anger warred, battling at him in a fight over his secret perversions and the danger of discovery while the two people who could bring all of that spilling out onto the floor were just a few feet from him.

"Steve?" It was Pepper, her voice low and soothing. Steve heard her step closer in the silence of the gym. 

"Hey buddy, you gave us a scare there. Hot button issue, we got it. Not a problem."

Steve breathed in heavily through his nose. "I'm Captain America. Everyone is equal in my eyes."

"Got it, Cap." Tony was closer, but the hand that rested high on Steve's back was Pepper. He almost wanted to sob, thinking that he had made a clean escape out of Phil's office only to be cornered by the two people most likely to break him. 

"That's our press release. That's what I'll tell the PR team. Women try to kiss you all the time during meet-and-greets, and this wasn't any different." Pepper spoke firmly, her hand curling around the back of Steve's neck. "We'll take care of it, Steve."

"I don't…I don't mind what you and Tony do. Or what anyone does. That's their right. Your right."

"Ah, fuck. Steve, that was just me running my mouth." Tony leaned against the ropes, smiling at Steve out of the mask. "I know you're not _that_ much of a prude."

Pepper sighed. "Tony."

"I'm not, though. I was in the USO for six months, then all over Europe." Steve stood up, and Pepper's hand fell away. He kept looking at the far wall of the gym. "But I get it. Knowing what I do of history now, I understand the controversy. There is still a lot of hate, a lot of bullies, in the world. But it's not a problem for _me_ , and I want people to know that. Live and let live."

"Live and let love?" Tony laughed. 

Steve nodded curtly and ducked out of the ring. He walked straight out of the gym, refusing to humor his baser instincts to turn around and look back at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There might be delay in posting the next chapter, as I've got some original fiction obligations to tend to which take priority (as they pay the bills). But it's should be too extensive.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a long chapter, sorry. Next few chapters start getting heavy so...enjoy it while you can? :D

> _TO: capt.rogers@sheild.org, capsicle@stark.com_  
>  _FROM: b.fulton@rogershouse.ny.gov_  
>  _SUBJECT: Invitation for 50th Year Anniversary_
> 
> _Dear Captain Rogers,_
> 
> _Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brenda Fulton, and I am the director of the Rogers’ House Museum. I understand that you are a busy man and get many such requests, but I was hoping that you might make some time for us in your schedule. We are celebrating the founding of the museum and would really love it if you could be there for the celebrations, which are happening on October 19 this year._
> 
> _I know you have been to the Rogers Memorial Wing at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian, as well as the Rogers Memorial Theater at the WWII Museum in New Orleans, but I admit disappointment that you have not managed to make it by. I’m wondering if perhaps no one has let you know we exist?_
> 
> _The Rogers House Museum was founded in 1962 by Howard Stark, who bought your Brooklyn flat just after your disappearance in 1944. Well, actually, he didn’t buy the flat, he bought the whole building. I’m sure you are very familiar with how the Starks operate._
> 
> _Since then we have maintained your flat in as pristine condition as possible, recreating the aspects of it that had suffered neglect while the building sat vacant during Stark Senior’s renown search for you. The rest of the house has been turned into a hands-on interpretive historical exhibit about Brooklyn during the Depression and War Years; we get roughly 20,000 students through here every year. It’s very popular, despite our low profile._
> 
> _Even if you are unable to participate in our 50th Anniversary celebrations (flier attached as PDF), please feel free to stop by anytime to visit. If I am not available, any of our volunteer docents would be thrilled to show you around (no really, they would be *thrilled*). Of course, I too would enjoy meeting the legend whose history we guard and share every day, so I hope to meet you soon._
> 
> _Sincerely,_  
>  _Brenda Fulton, MLS, CA_  
>  _Director, The Rogers House Museum_  
>  _Brooklyn, NY_

Everyone stopped when Steve threw the flier on the table. Group dinner had more or less become habit a few nights every week, and everyone was sitting around eating—-except Pepper, who was in Japan; and Tony, who was still filling his plate in the kitchen (because after several weeks he finally figured out no one was going to do it for him).

Steve folded his arms and stared at them.

Bruce picked up the paper. “Oh. Well, sure, we can go. That’s what you’re asking? For all of us to go? Because it’s been a while since I went there, but for the 50th Anniversary party, I could go.”

“This some kind of group date?” Clint grabbed for the paper, read it, and sighed. “Man, that does not sound fun. It’s not like the place changes.” He passed it over to Natasha, who wrinkled her nose before passing it to Coulson, who barely glanced at it.

“Thank you, Captain, but I already bought my ticket for the event several months ago. Looking forward to it, especially the presentation by the great Captain America scholar Professor Stan Lee…” Coulson trailed off, and everyone went on alert.

Probably because Steve could feel his anger building. He knew it was obvious, his pale skin never doing much to hide his temper. “My apartment? Everyone here has been through my apartment?”

Stark finally walked in with his plate full of food. “Have we? I mean I built this place, of course I’ve been through it.”

Clint reached over, snagged the paper and handed it to Stark, who read it, rolled his eyes and sighed. “God, I forgot about that place. Yes, sure, we can throw some money at it, really give the anniversary party some sparkle. Red, white and blue fireworks. I’ll have Pepper fix it all up. Happy now? Dinner?” Tony pointed at his plate.

Steve picked up the paper. “They turned my _home_ into a _museum_ and not a damn one of you bothered to tell me.” He crumpled up the flier and tossed it onto the middle of the table before turning and walking out.

\-----------

Steve opened the door to Coulson, which was not much of a surprise. When it came to _Captain America_ , most of the Avengers tended to let Agent Coulson do the heavy lifting outside of an actual mission or movie night.

Phil held up the crumpled flier. “Can we talk?”

Steve waved him in. They sat down in the living room, Steve on the couch, Phil in one of the chairs.

“First, I owe you an apology. I assumed that during your briefings to catch you up on 20th Century history, you were informed about the Rogers’ House. I further assumed that your lack of interest in visiting it was due to not wanting to see it. These were all mistakes on my part.” He gently placed the crumpled flier on the coffee table and smoothed it out flat.

Steve leaned back, crossing his arms, not intending to make it easy for Phil. “You’ve been there?”

Phil blushed in the way he had whenever his Captain America fascination was brought up. “Several times. It is a…a mecca for Cap fans.” He looked purposefully anywhere but at Steve.

“It was my _home_.” Steve looked at the flier, which was decorated with a nice ink sketch of the brownstone.

“It hasn’t changed, much. I’m sure you will see things out of place, but it is pretty close to how it was found when the building was re-opened in 1960, right before Howard Stark established it as a museum and donated it to the State of New York. Mostly they just dusted it.”

“The rest of the building is proper museum.” Steve sighed, because he wasn’t even sure what his point was anymore.

“An award winning historical museum, yes. Countless school children go through it and learn a lot about American history under the guise of learning more about you. I have been very impressed every time I went there.”

They sat in silence for a long time, Phil allowing Steve to process the whole thing. Finally Steve uncrossed his arms and rubbed his face. “I want to visit it.”

Phil picked up the flier. “Consider it done. I’ll arrange it with Director Fulton and let you know when.”

Steve nodded as Phil let himself out. At the last second, Phil turned around. “Steve?”

Steve looked over at him.

“I know it is disconcerting to think of thousands of strangers staring at your former home, but someday I will find a way to make you understand just how important your life, your leadership, has been to so many of us. You were and are a role model and if we can instill just a fraction of your good qualities into children’s lives by letting them see where you slept in 1939, then I think it is a price well paid.” He turned and left.

Steve sat on the couch for most of the night, watching the lights of the city flicker far below him, wondering what people would think of their hero if they knew half of the truth about his life before the serum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually the very first piece written in this series, before "More Man than You" and even before I had started much research. It's been rewritten of course but still, I think it's interesting to note that this little idea of Steve's apartment being turned into a museum gave birth to such a...humongous story. What the hell was I thinking?????
> 
> FYI The professional creds Fulton uses are "Masters of Library Studies" (MLS) and "Certified Archivist" (CA).


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No reason to sit on this, as it's done, and it flows nicely off the last chapter. Enjoy!

Steve stood outside the brownstone, his hands in his pockets. Beside him, Phil stood calmly, waiting for his lead. 

“I can’t believe Howard bought the whole building.”

Phil tipped his head in acknowledgment. “He really did expect to find you fairly quickly.”

“He had no reason to expect I’d be alive,” Steve said, squinting behind his sunglasses. 

“Howard understood Erskine’s work better than anyone else; I consider it a failure on our part not to have paid more attention to the fact that he did expect you to turn up alive. That was a massive clue that we simply dismissed.”

Steve smiled at him. “Everyone just thought he was being a crazy eccentric.”

“Yes. Not unlike his son, in that regard.”

Steve shook his head. “I hope you know better, now.”

“Yes, now I know _know_ the Starks are crazy eccentrics,” Phil said, nodding seriously. Steve laughed. Then he looked up at the house, his home through most of the late 1930s and until he joined the Army. His military pay had helped him hold on to the place, which he had done as insurance against being washed out of basic training. Afterward, when he left on tour, he paid his landlord irregularly but always got generous promises that his stuff was safe, the flat was still his, and it would be waiting for the Great Captain America when he came home from defeating Hitler. 

The irony was more than a little painful. 

The front door opened and a startled, small woman looked straight at Steve, squeaked, and then ran back inside.

Phil smiled. “I think you’ve been made.”

“I think so. Let’s go see what the director can show us.”

As they traipsed up the stairs, a different woman appeared at the door. She was short and a little frumpy, but dressed in a slacks and a stylish blouse in dark blue. Her hair was salt and pepper gray, a great mass of tangled curls held back, as far as Steve could tell, by magic. 

“Captain Rogers!” She sounded familiar, like Brooklyn and his childhood, and Steve instinctively smiled at her as he held out his hand. 

“Director Fulton?”

She shook his hand firmly, her grip strong despite her long, soft fingers. “Please call me Brenda.”

“And you can call me Steve. Thanks for opening the museum up on your day off. This is Agent Coulson, he is here in an official capacity.”

Phil raised his eyebrows subtly at that but took off his sunglasses and shook Brenda’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you. I haven’t been here in several years.”

Sighing in frustration, Steve turned to Brenda. “As I said in my email, I was completely unaware that this museum even existed, despite the fact that _everyone else I know_ seems to have been here.”

Brenda nodded, her eyes soft. Steve upped his assumption about her age to around 50, based on the crow’s feet around her eyes. She carried herself well, and while she wasn’t beautiful she radiated kindness and intelligence.

“Come on in. I assure you, I'm glad to come in for a personal tour, it's worth losing my usual weekend. I figure you want to see Rogers’…uh, I mean, your apartment first?” She cringed at the mistake, but it made Steve smile. 

“Yeah, I would.”

The small, rail-thin woman who had spotted them from the front door dashed in and stood in front of Steve. She was even shorter than the director, and a little younger, and dressed in an ill-fitting sweater and skirt that almost matched. “Captain!” 

“Hi.” Steve held out his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brenda looking exasperated.

“I’m…I’m so happy!” The woman shook his hand vigorously with a fierce grip.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Captain Steve Rogers.”

She flushed, pleased and embarrassed. “I know!”

“Sally, please let go of Captain America’s hand.”

Sally dropped his hand. “You’re here!”

“Yes, I am.” Steve smiled at Sally, figuring out that maybe she was somewhat challenged in some way and worried about hurting her feelings. 

Brenda stepped forward. “Sally helps us a lot around here. She’s a huge fan.” She turned to Sally. “Maybe later when I’m done showing him around, Captain America will sign your new comic book for you?” 

Sally grinned so widely that Steve worried she would hurt herself. She gave him a teary-eyed look and then dashed off again. Brenda looked over at Steve. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Some people like to make fun of Sally’s obsession with you. She’s got a heart of gold and she worships you, but she’s easily hurt. She’s great for answering emails and doing research, but I usually try to shield her from our patrons. There was really no way I could in good conscience not let her know you were coming in today. She's mostly doing some filing in my office, though.”

Steve stared at the director for a moment before answering. “I’m honored that you have her working here with you, in my former home.”

Brenda studied him in turn. “You mean that, don’t you?” She turned to Phil. “Is he really like this?”

Phil nodded solemnly, and Steve felt like he was a third wheel in the conversation all of a sudden. 

“He is. It’s quite an honor.”

Brenda blushed. “I imagine it is.” She turned back to Steve. “Well. Uhm. Let’s go.” She abruptly turned and headed to the stairs. In the main room Steve saw hints of exhibits about Brooklyn, which he was anxious to see, but he followed the director upstairs towards his apartment.

It really was pretty much the same. The room could only be accessed by the front door, but it was roped off inside. He stood in the middle of the room, looking around. Over his bed were dozens of his practice drawings, just as he had left them tacked to the wall when he headed off to basic training in 1943, but they looked odd. Brenda caught his gaze.

“They are copies. When the museum was created, the director found the originals yellowing and crumbling. They preserved what they could and re-created them. We replace them every five years so they don’t yellow. The flat is meant to look like you just walked out.” 

Phil cleared his throat. “Two drawings actually made it onto the private market. One was purchased by Howard Stark in 1973 and donated back to the museum; the other was last seen on auction by Christie’s, bought by an anonymous collector in 1999 for $68,000.”

Steve choked. “Sixty eight thousand dollars?” 

Brenda shrugged. “Your notebook from the USO tour went for $218,000 in 2003. Sotheby’s.”

“Again, anonymous collector. Assumed to be the same person; most people suspect a wealthy Bahrainian comic book connoisseur.” Phil sighed, as if genuinely disappointed that he wasn’t the lucky man. 

Steve stared at them, remembering Tony's off-hand comment about 'the war sketchbooks' and realizing what he had meant. He had seen one of his sketchbooks, water damaged and slightly ripped up, on display at the Smithsonian, but he had not thought it more than curiosity at the time. Steve knew that in the two years he tramped through Europe, he had filled up half a dozen sketchbooks, and he wondered how many were still floating around, with collectors paying tens of thousands of dollars for sketchbooks Steve had bought for a quarter and filled up with silly cartoons of the Commandos and half-assed sketches of landscapes. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“No. That’s why the originals are heavily insured and under lock and key now. We learned our lesson the hard way.” Brenda glared at the copies on the wall. “Everyone wants a piece of Captain America.”

“That’s ME.” Steve pointed at himself, and both Brenda and Phil looked at him in surprise. “This? Is me!” He pointed at the room. “That’s my hairbrush! Are you telling me someone would try to sell that?”

Brenda gave Phil a sheepish look before answering. “That’s why it’s a replica too. I, uh, I can show you your actual hairbrush, if you want, it’s down in the vault in the basement—”

“Oh my God.” Steve looked at the bed, his blood going cold. He stepped over the cord barricade and walked up to the frame. “This is real.” He let the fragile green silk run through his fingers.

Brenda nodded. “Yes. We don’t know the significance, of course; most scholars think it was just decorative…uh.” Her voice trailed off as Steve gently went to his knees, holding the silk to his face. It was too late to cry for the kid who died, too late to do anything about it more than what he and Bucky had done. Their first mission together, and Steve hadn’t even known that much at the time. 

The silk had not aged well, going dull and delicate from all the years hanging listlessly off the frame of the bed. 

Steve realized his eyes were closed when he felt Phil’s hand on his shoulder. “Captain Rogers?”

Steve let the silk fall from his hands, and stood up. Phil looked up at him, worried. 

“I’m not sure the world is ready for that story, even now.”

Phil and Brenda exchanged looks. She took a breath before speaking. “You’re under no obligation, Captain. This tour is for you. This was your home, and I’m sorry if we seem a little cavalier about that. We don’t mean to be. This is, in so many ways, like a shrine to so many of us.”

Steve looked at her, wondering yet again how people really saw him. So much history had passed by him, and much of it was complex and contradictory. He had read all the debriefings, and the history books that Stark downloaded onto his tablet. He knew so much, and yet suddenly the most important things were mysteries to him. Just as, for so many people, he was a mystery to them.

The question was whether it was right to take the mystery away from them. There in his old room, a place that had become a pilgrimage for thousands of people over the years, he didn't think it was. 

He turned to Phil. “What would make you lose faith in Captain America?”

“Nothing.” Phil’s answer was instantaneous. 

“Not even if he witnessed a murder, and did nothing about it?”

Phil frowned. “That…you wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re right. I did do something about it.” Steve ran his fingers over the silk again, ignoring the genuinely shocked looks from Phil and Brenda. Taking a deep breath, he moved away from the bed, from the memories of Bucky spread out there, from the years Steve spent wondering what his future would hold. 

“My comics survived. Some of my other drawings survived, obviously. I’d like to know what else.”

“The pin-up drawings you did for friends of Sergeant Barnes.” Brenda frowned, thinking, and looked at Phil, who picked up the thread.

“Only seven of those are known to exist. None of your original work for Treat ‘Em Right Publishing remains, only the printed versions.”

“Thank God for that,” Steve said with genuine gratitude. He figured Tijuana bibles would be one step too far for most anyone. Phil continued frowning, although his expression changed to one of intense scrutiny. 

Brenda stepped forward, tipping her chin up.“Captain, to be blunt: are you saying that scarf has something to do with a murder? That you witnessed a murder?”

Steve held his breath for a second. “I’m not comfortable saying anything else about that. Just…make sure nothing ever happens to that scarf. Please, ma’am: it’s important to me.” Steve knew it was a low blow to put it to her like that, but it had the desired effect. She straightened up and nodded like a soldier who had just been given orders. 

He looked over at the trunk next to his bed, then set about clearing off the top of it to open it up. Picking up one of the blankets, which he had never owned, he turned back to Brenda. “Did Howard go through here before he donated the building?”

She gave him a confused expression for a moment before it cleared. “Oh, you mean Howard Stark. Honestly, I don’t know. If he did take anything, he did not make a record of it. What you see here is what we, or rather my predecessor, found. Why? Are things missing?”

Steve gazed down at where all of his very incriminating pre-war sketchbooks had been stored. They represented years of drawings from the drag shows at Little Buck’s, the gay world of the cafeterias, and Everard bathhouse where Steve sketched ideas for the bibles. Pages and pages of Bucky, sitting and laughing and nude. Anything that might have ever sullied the honorable name of Captain America was gone. Steve put the musty blankets back where he found them and replaced everything on the trunk as they had been. He looked over at the green scarf again, figuring that Howard had not taken it simply because he did not know its significance.

“I think I’ve seen enough. Why don’t you show me the museum section?” Steve lead the way out of the room, imagining closing the door behind as he went. 

Brenda took them through the standard tour, although Steve held them up a lot by pointing out where things used to be, like the telephone that had been placed awkwardly in the front parlor. Most traces of the familiar were gone, though, because other than his flat, a slightly larger flat that had been the home of the five McLeod brothers, and the water closet, every room in the place had been stripped down to the brick and repurposed for museum exhibits. Brenda asked Steve a lot of questions about the McLeod's, because apparently other than their names there was nothing left in their two-room flat when they all went to war.

Steve was impressed by the museum, and learned a lot about the history of Brooklyn himself. He said as much to Brenda, saying that he had just been born and raised there, not written a thesis on the place. Even Phil laughed at that.

But on the other hand, it was also exhausting. All the photographs of food lines and hungry families and factory workers of the Depression were black and white, while Steve's memories were in technicolor. The old, battered examples of dry good groceries were the same brands he had stuffed into his mesh shopping bag at Cecilia's father's store, but the labels were yellowed and the cans rusty. There was a small display about the Prohibition with a photograph of a glamorous speakeasy, but there was nothing about the dirty neighborhood bars or the brothels or the fairies who hooked by the docks. It was everything he remembered, but nothing like he remembered it. 

"What do you know about Bucky?" Steve turned to Phil as they were stopped in front of the Prohibition exhibit. 

"There is only one biography on Bucky Barnes. I've read it, of course, but I have to admit it leaves a lot out because there simply isn't much left in the written records. His parents died young, like yours, and like you he was taken in by family rather than sent to an orphanage. We know he did some carpentry work, possibly as an apprentice, before he joined the Army." Phil shrugged. "There are a lot of holes there. Most of what we know comes from statements you made about him to the press, his role as a Howling Commando, and the three surviving letters you wrote him prior to your joining the Army."

Brenda was nodding along until she looked at Steve. "Oh my God, Captain, do you need to sit down?"

Phil stepped up but Steve pushed him away, air tight in his lungs. "My surviving letters?"

"[V-Mail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail) that you sent to Barnes in early 1943," Phil clarified slowly. 

Brenda nodded again. "They were found with…oh, with Sergeant Barnes' belongings. Stark — Howard Stark — had Barnes' trunk shipped here. You were listed as his only living relative, but you…oh." She looked helplessly at Phil.

"You went into the ice just days after he died, Steve. Stark grabbed everything of yours, including Barnes' trunk, and sent it stateside. Most of that was eventually part of the foundation gift to the Smithsonian. I believe that's where the letters are."

"I didn't see them there." Steve wrapped his arms around himself, trying to remember what the letters said. It was V-Mail so there was no way he wrote anything incriminating, but it was private nonetheless. He did not even know why Bucky had held on to those three letters for two years. He must have been carting them around with him the whole time he was with the Commandos. 

"The Captain America exhibit rotates items from its…from your collection," Brenda explained, gently putting one hand on his arm. "It's possible you were there when more of the military items were on display?"

Steve nodded. His _letters_.

"Bucky boxed, in the clubs. For money. Before they repealed Prohibition we was a runner for one of the gangsters." Steve stared the photo of the speakeasy, a bright and shiny picture of people partying. He didn't recognize the place, but that did not surprise him, most of the big ones had closed down quickly after the repeal. His personal haunts had been the local bar with Bucky…and Greenwich Village. "Bucky had a life. A whole life, with me, we grew up together. But it's not like he's even _here_." He waved one arm around to indicate the museum. 

Brenda patted his arm again. "This is all a little overwhelming, I think. Would you like some fresh air?" 

"Yes, please."

Somehow Brenda got Sally to appear out of nowhere, and she led him through the exhibits and the back offices out to the small alleyway in the back that seemed to be the one thing other than his own flat that had not changed much. Although it did not smell too rank, the way it used to stink of trash and urine and sex, so Steve sat down on the wooden steps and looked up at the sliver of sky above him. 

"Are you okay?" Sally asked slowly. "Ms. Fulton looked worried. They're talking about you, you know."

"I know. That's okay. I think I upset them."

"You wouldn't do that. You're Steve Rogers."

He looked over at her, then patted the space next to him. She smiled and plopped down. He could not really figure her age. She acted very young, but there were tell-tale signs of age around her face. He supposed it didn't really matter. "I would never upset them on purpose. But…you know I used to live here?"

She rolled her eyes. "That's why I work here! You're my hero!"

Steve smiled. "Thank you."

"So why does that upset you?"

"Because, well, because everything's changed."

"Things change all the time, though. The grocery by me stopped selling my favorite yogurt." She huffed in annoyance. "It was blueberry. It's popular! Why would they stop selling my blueberry yogurt?"

"I really don't know."

"Me either. So there it is. Things change." 

Steve nodded. "I suppose. There are a lot of things I don't miss, like the Depression. That was pretty horrible. But I miss my…I miss Bucky."

"I love Bucky! He's so handsome!" She gave a little swoon, then smiled at him mischievously.

"More handsome than I am?" Steve smiled back at her.

She studied him closely, then nodded. "Yes."

"I always thought so too!" He laughed, pleased with her honesty. 

She shrugged. "But you're Steve Rogers. You're Captain America! So that makes you better."

Steve sighed. "You know why I really got upset in there?"

"You were sad?"

"Right. But not because I miss the past. I do, a little. I miss feeling like I belong. But I was upset because for all that everyone seems to know everything about me, they got an awful lot wrong. And I don't know what to do about that."

"People are wrong a lot. They think I'm stupid, and I'm not. Things are just harder for me. But they make fun of me and laugh at me—" She stopped, clutching her hands together. "But they laughed at you too, they said skinny Steve Rogers would never amount to anything. You fought back! You showed them that you're strong, and good. I try to remember that, every day."

Steve felt like he was one step from breaking down in tears. "That…that was the serum, Sally."

"No!" She looked surprised. "No, you were like that before the treatment. Everyone says so! Dr. Erskine's notes about you are very, very clear: 'a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.' Small or big, you were always a good man. No matter what anyone said about you. You always stood up for the underdog. You always treated everyone equally. You were always a gentleman. That's why you're Captain America." She patted his leg. "That's why you'll always be Captain America, no matter what anyone says about you."

Steve reached out and pulled her into a short, tight hug. She patted his back awkwardly before pushing him away and standing up. "Have you seen the school room exhibit? It looks awful, I wouldn't want to go to school in the 1930s." 

Steve followed her lead, standing up. "On the flip side, I graduated high school right before my fifteenth birthday." He opened the door to let her back into the building. 

She peered up at him. "Lucky!"

Steve almost laughed. "Trust me, I thought so to."

He apologized to Brenda and Phil when he found them in her office. They both treated him like glass for the rest of the visit, which Steve found annoying, but he was able to appreciate the museum without incident. Before he left, he promised Brenda that he would attend the big anniversary party in the fall.

He knew that was going to be the last time he ever returned to the Rogers' House Museum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have interned and worked at historical museums, and am currently a professional archivist. I often wonder how the people who used to live in what are now museums would react to seeing them.
> 
> Also, Sally is a homage to a deceased museum volunteer I used to work with many, many years ago. She was a lovely, kind-hearted person who loved the work she got to do. Interns like me came and went but "Sally" volunteered until her health gave out. <3
> 
> If you didn't click the link about V-mail, you should. It still stands as one of the most impressive records management/data transfer operations in history; given the technology of the era, it's just mind-boggling that it was as successful as it was.


	9. Chapter 9

The day after his museum trip, Steve found his schedule inexplicably cleared. He double checked his calendar on his tablet, then triple checked with JARVIS, but it was the same result: he had nowhere to be and nothing to do. He stared at the tablet, sitting at his desk in his den. 

“I believe Ms. Potts took the liberty of rescheduling your day, Captain.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“She was concerned about your needing time to process your experiences from yesterday,” JARVIS said as gently as an AI could. 

Steve shook his head. “After everything I’ve been through, JARVIS, seeing my old apartment doesn’t really rate very high.” 

JARVIS was quiet for a moment. “Sir is at the door, requesting entry.”

“Sure, why not? Let him in.” Steve tipped his head back to rest on the chair and stared at the ceiling. 

“So this is you moping? I was expecting more pouty face.” Tony came in and propped himself up against the desk. 

“I’m not moping. I’m wondering why Pepper cleared my schedule. I had an interview and then testing for Bruce.”

“So your plan was to stay busy? Okay. We can do that too.” Tony whipped out his phone and started tapping at it.

“No, Tony. No.” Steve waved a hand at him, for all the good it would do. 

“Ta da! Museum time. You're an artist, you’ll love it. We’re going to the Met.”

Steve sighed. “I like the Met.”

“You’ll like it even more now. It’s bigger.”

Steve laughed as he stood up. “That’s your qualification for better? That it’s bigger?”

Tony opened his mouth and then shut it again, clearly at pains to stay quiet.

“Tony, I was in the Army for two years and before that I was a working class kid in Brooklyn. You can’t tell me any off-color joke I haven’t heard before,” Steve said, leaving out how the crudest jokes he ever heard were the ones the drag queens at Little Buck’s had told. 

Tony did an awkward body dip that was almost a shrug. “I don’t know about you, sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not what I expected. You’re not like all the comic books and the bad movies, or even anything like my father told me.”

“Howard…Howard talked about me?”

Tony stared at him as if he was growing a third head. “You do realize that the expedition that found you was funded by Stark Industries, right?”

“What? I thought it was SHIELD.” 

“They were along for the ride. My father left a whole chunk of his personal fortune to continue the search for Captain Steve Rogers. You were one of his greatest accomplishments; Erskine couldn’t have done what he did without Dad’s tech. Dad was very possessive about you. Your memory, I should say. You visited Rogers’ House yesterday, so don’t tell me you don’t know the history of that.”

“Yes, but… I didn’t think he’d talk about me.”

Tony inspected his nails. “Well, he did.” 

“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to talk about that. Fine. We’re going to the museum?” Steve walked out of the den. 

Tony trailed after him. “Pepper’s joining us.” He spun in place in the main room. “Have you done anything to decorate this place?”

“No. It’s great like it is. Pepper did a good job.”

“She did a good job with the _paint_ and the _carpet_. You’ve left everything empty.”

Steve pointed to the kitchenette, where he had hung up the annual cat calendar from the Humane Society of New York. 

“I really…no, this is too much. We’re leaving. And I will buy you a damn art poster from the Met, and you will hang it on your wall using thumbtacks like a sophomore finally getting a single dorm room, and Pepper and I will admire it like proud parents seeing our boy all grown up.” Tony flailed his arms and stomped out. Steve figured that their lack of understanding was mutual. 

"That's creepy, Tony," Steve said as they got into the elevator.

"Shut up, you're at least fifteen years younger than I am." Tony said sharply, although his lips were tugging into a smile. " _Kiddo._ "

"Don't start with me, old man."

"Ouch. How you wound me." Tony put his hands in his pockets and let his smile break free. Steve worked hard not to stare because relaxed and smiling, Tony was leagues ahead of his father in looks and charm, and Steve really did not need to be thinking about that right before they were joined by Pepper to spend the whole day in close proximity.

When the elevators opened up on the parking garage, Pepper was standing in front of the limo, bouncing in a pair of comfortable flats, while Happy smiled at them indulgently. 

"You take the express elevator?" Tony asked, kissing her cheek and for once not having to get on his toes to do it. 

"The Met!" Pepper grinned. "Of course I took the express." She turned and smiled at Steve. "I don't know what you did to convince him to take the day off for a museum trip, but thank you!"

"Anything for a lady," Steve said, following them into the limo. 

"You hear that?" Pepper said, giving Tony a playfully waspish look. 

"Sorry, what? I'm so old, my hearing is gone." Tony cupped a hand over his ear.

Pepper looked confused, glancing between them.

"Tony was being creepy, talking about you and him being proud parents." He shrugged, trying not to blush.

Pepper's mouth dropped open. "Of YOU?"

Tony let out a loud laugh, nearly snorting with it, and bent over his lap cackling. 

Steve smiled at Tony, and Pepper started giggling, lighting up with delight. She reached out for Steve's knee and clutched it as her giggles turned into full fledge laughter, and Steve was helpless then to stop himself from joining in until they were all nearly in a pile of hysterics. Steve began to think that the museum trip was the best idea Tony had ever had.

It turned out that touring he Met with Tony Stark was not anything like doing something so mundane as walking around a museum. Rooms were closed down when they entered, extra security standing at entry ways and exits while Happy stood discretely behind them holding the Iron Man suitcase, and whatever staff happened to be the expert in that subject or era called up to give them a personal art history lecture. The museum director "dropped by" twice to make sure everything was to their expectations, and they got a private lunch in the exclusive Member's Dining Room overlooking Central Park. Steve mostly tried not to act like a hick, and was grateful that his social studies with his SHIELD tutors had covered modern art history a little. 

Pepper was an art connoisseur and asked insightful, educated questions. Tony didn't ask anything but commented occasionally with observations that revealed a deep and thorough classical education. Steve's fingers twitched, wanting to draw in the presence of masters, but he did not have any questions. Certainly nothing he had to say would rival the erudite commentary of everyone around him. He suspected the security guards probably had a better high school education than he did.

In the Wisteria Room, Pepper lagged, looking thoughtfully _towards_ the beautiful murals on the walls but not actually seeing them, she was so lost in thought. "Wait, wait. Tony. Tony!"

Tony stepped away from the Art Nouveau floor lamp he was studying. "Yes, Miss Potts?"

"Did you build a studio for Steve?"

"Three weeks ago. You love it, don't you, Steve?" Tony said dismissively, turning back to the lamp.

"Uh, yes. It's huge. Great. Really great." 

Pepper put her hands on her hips, studying Steve with narrowed eyes. "Do you _use_ it?"

"Pepper, I'm going to sic Agent on you. Don't you know that Captain Rogers was an artist before turning to war?" Tony turned around again and grinned at her.

"Excuse me for not punching my fangirl card, Mr. I-Own-an-Original-Enterprise-Model-from-the-Show." 

Tony raised a finger. "The Original Star Trek, thankyouverymuch."

"That silly TV show Clint likes so much?" Steve frowned, and both Pepper and Tony turned on him. He raised his hands in surrender. "I like Flash Gordon. No offense."

An evil gleam came over Tony's eyes. "Heh. Flesh Gordon."

"No! Oh my GOD, no, Tony! No!" Pepper actually screeched and starting running at Tony, who turned and fled. By the time Steve slowly, very slowly caught up to them two rooms over, they were kissing heavily under Renoir's painting "By the Seashore." The room spoke more to Steve's meager art training than the world of the modern, stylish couple making out like teenagers, and he watched them from the corner of his eye as he studied a still life by Sisley. Pepper broke away, giggling like a young girl, and punched Tony in the shoulder before wandering over to see what Steve was looking at. 

"I always admired painters," Steve said, uncomfortable for reasons he did not want to dwell on.

"Tony said that you're an artist?"

"Sure. But I never worked much with paint, it's expensive. I did pen and pencil, charcoal, that kind of thing. Water colors when I could get the right paper on sale. I always did okay with paint but learning a medium well enough to express yourself in it, that's tough. Anyway the publishing house mostly wanted ink work, or etchings. Color plates were a bit more upscale than my boss was willing to go in for. Dime novel covers, cartoons, comics, that kind of thing, that's what I did." 

Pepper blinked a few times. "Oh. You worked as a _professional_ illustrator?"

Steve stared at the painting. He wasn't sure how to explain that he thought of himself as an illustrator, that he worked at it professionally for ten years before becoming Captain America, or that most of the time he felt more like a small, hungry artist than the world's first superhero. It wasn't as if that part of his life mattered anymore. He shrugged. "Before the war."

It was the fall back answer that seemed to make people go quiet, Steve had learned, and it worked on Pepper too. She gave him a sympathetic smile and patted his arm before following Tony to the next room. The rest of the afternoon passed in haze of art, and despite Steve's persistent melancholy he managed to enjoy himself. Tony kept making horrible puns and Pepper finally broke down and just grabbed Steve's hand to pull him from room to room. At one point Tony grabbed Steve's other hand and trailed along, yelling "Bueller! Bueller!" which made Pepper, Happy, and several of the security guards laugh. Steve didn't get the joke but found himself smiling at them as they marched in line through several galleries in the Contemporary Art department.

When they got back to the tower, the whole team was milling around on the common floor, and it was painfully obvious to Steve that they were there to check on him. Given the effects of the serum treatment, he wondered why people still thought of him as frail and delicate. He gave Phil a pained look as he walked through the room to the kitchen area. Phil, who was set up at the dining table with a tablet and a Hawkeye and a Black Widow, at least had the grace to cringe just a little. Clint laughed. 

When Steve came back into the room with his liter of Coke in hand, Bruce had migrated from the far corner to his lounge chair. Phil was standing by the dining table, poking at his tablet to shut it down, while Clint and Natasha commandeered the small sofa for the three of them. Thor, who was being unusually circumspect and quiet, saluted Steve with his own liter of Mountain Dew and settled on his chaise lounge, looking exceptionally regal for someone wearing a Nyan Cat teeshirt. Tony and Pepper were already set up in their love seat, Pepper's feet tucked under Tony's thigh as she leaned back against the armrest and sighed in contentment. Steve was careful not to stare at the picture they made as he fell into his own chair. "I guess we're watching a movie?"

Tony nodded, head tipped back. "I'm done. I think we walked a marathon through that museum today, if I get blisters then—"

"Tony, shut up and pick a movie," Pepper sighed. 

"He picked last time!" Clint sat up. 

Phil cuffed the back of his head. "You sound like a child."

"Hey! I—"

"Make you a deal, Hawkguy: I pick the opening act, you pick the movie."

"DEAL!" Clint clapped his hands. Bruce rolled his eyes and surreptitiously pulled his own tablet out, clearly expecting the worst. Steve honestly wasn't sure what could be worse than _Point Break_ but he knew better than to start that argument again.

Tony turned and looked at him with a surprisingly serious expression. "Up for a little nostalgia, Cap? Or is it too soon?"

Pepper frowned. "Tony."

"Go ahead, Tony. I think my delicate mental well being is safe for now," Steve said and took a swig from the plastic jug to show how much he didn't care.

Tony nodded and punched at his phone. The room went into "entertainment system mode" as Tony called it: lights dimmed, the huge movie screen appeared out of the wall and the walkways to and from the kitchen and the elevator were illuminated by low-level lighting tracks sunk into the floor. 

And then Captain America saved the world.

Steve groaned as the old newsreels flashed on screen. By modern standards they looked worn and haphazard, even though Steve remembered the film crews as experienced professionals who lugged around hundreds of pounds of state-of-the-art equipment. 

"Hey, pause!" Steve said. Everyone looked at him. He pointed. "See that? We were along the Marne, outside Reims. The film crew got flown in by Howard, it was a big secret. But you can see that Jacques is hungover as hell, most of the guys were!" Steve laughed. "The town had been liberated the day before and was just a stop-over for us, but the people there threw a huge party that lasted most of the night. We were basically on downtime but this film crew, they wanted some action shots so, here, play! Play!" The movie started up again and Steve laughed harder. "So we had Dum Dum put on a black coat with a scarf over his face and 'attack' the local inn; we all ran in and out of that damn building about twenty times. Howard just kept feeding the news guys raw film to waste. I don't think anyone was sober by the time they wrapped!" He was laughing so hard he was crying, holding his stomach. "Colonel Phillips was furious!" 

Everyone else had joined in by the time the reel finished with a majestic shot of Captain America 'claiming' the 'enemy stronghold' with a bottle of local wine in his hand. 

"Oh! God! Best idea ever!" Tony gasped for air as Pepper slumped against him, laughing so hard her face was red. "Jarvis! Next!"

Steve wiped his eyes as the next film started up with the familiar dramatic voice-over. "Oh, this was much later! You see—"

"Who is that?" Natasha snapped so loudly that everyone stopped to stare at her. Jarvis paused the movie. 

"That is Sergeant James 'Bucky' Barnes, Captain Rogers' close friend who ow!" Phil yelped and then glared at Clint, who had elbowed him. 

"Steve knows who he is, Phil." 

Steve nodded. "Bucky. My best friend. We grew up together." He smiled at Natasha. "All the girls liked him, he was a real charmer."

Natasha had not torn her eyes from the screen, where Bucky was looking off to the side — probably at Steve, if Steve remembered the filming correctly. Even in black and white, Bucky's fierce good looks commanded attention, his dark eyes and fair skin a study in contrasts. Steve's stomach twisted. 

"What happened to him?" She asked, frowning.

Phil opened his mouth but then glanced over at Steve.

"I lost him." Steve leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. Natasha looked at him sharply, and he shrugged. "He died on a mission a few days before I went in the ice. We were up a mountain. He fell off a moving train into a ravine. It was a…a long drop. I tried to grab him but the metal tore loose and I wasn't fast enough. He fell." Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then looked up at the screen again. "It doesn't feel very long ago to me. He was my best friend."

"Jarvis—" Tony started.

"No! No, keep it rolling. It's good to see him, like we used to be. I never thought about watching these reels, seeing everybody again. It's good, Tony. It's good." He smiled in the face of Tony's genuine distress. Pepper wrapped her arms around Tony and pulled him to sit back down with her. 

"I'm sorry for your loss," Natasha said, but there was something wrong and stilted to the words. Clint was looking at her, his expression closed, and Steve wasn't about to touch whatever it was going on with them.

"S'okay, Nat. He was a good guy and I'm glad I knew him. Heck you probably would have gotten along great with him, he was a first class fighter."

She gave him a funny, lopsided and completely uncharacteristic smile. "I'm sure."

Steve nodded, and did not miss the looks that Phil and Clint were exchanging. "Jarvis, go ahead and start it up. I was going to say, this was a few weeks before, before Bucky went down." Steve continued on, and while the stories for the following reels were not all fun and laughter, he managed to make them amusing enough to lighten the mood again and keep his team entertained. 

Later, as they watched _Clueless_ (Clint's pick, although in a surprising turn of events Bruce backed him on the choice), Steve had time to wonder who Bucky had reminded Natasha of. It was clear that she saw something familiar and upsetting in Bucky, and that made Steve sad. Bucky had been more than the love of Steve's life: he had a been a good man, a good soldier, and a hard-knocks fighter. There was nothing not to admire about Bucky, and Steve found himself aching with the desire to be able to introduce his team to the one man who had really mattered to Steve, a long, long time ago.


	10. Chapter 10

The next attempt on Steve's life did not result in any arrow wounds for him, but the fight against the third-generation sentient Doombots took twice as long as it should have — and twice as much property damage — because everyone kept tripping Steve.

Literally. 

The end tally of "accidents" was two bow-swipes from Barton, three snatch-and-grabs by the Hulk, six repulsor blasts by Iron Man, two lightening-strikes by Thor and a building collapse by the Black Widow (she refused to admit it was her fault over the comms, but Steve knew it was her). Steve still managed to play his part in the battle and not break a damn leg, although it became more of a gymnastics workout for him than he was expecting. 

When it was over, Coulson blandly called the team to convene at his SUV for a check-in and unofficial debriefing. Steve held back until he knew everyone was there, then walked up and slung his shield at the SUV. Barton barely leapt out of the way and Iron Man's armor got a new scratch as the shield buried itself into the engine block with a loud, vibrating "clang." 

Tony, of course, was the first to react. "What the HELL, Rogers! Fuck! The battle's over, asshole!" He twisted his leg out like a girl checking her stockings as he inspected the minor damage. 

Steve walked up calmly, ignoring the fact that Barton had an arrow trained on him and both Coulson and Romanoff had pulled their guns, safety off. Hulk finished the job by smashing in the top of the car with his fist, probably thinking they were playing a game. Thor held his hammer at the ready but he just looked confused.

"Thanks, big guy. I think they got the message." Steve saluted the Hulk and then pulled his shield out of the completely destroyed car. He figured they could take the cost out of his exorbitant bank account.

"Something to say, Captain?" Coulson asked, his revolver still at the ready, if pointed at the ground. 

"We're a team. We work together, or we don't work at all. Tripping me up every thirty seconds while we are in the middle of a fight doesn't help anyone. It made this battle go twice as long and twice as hard for no. Damn. Reason!" He turned on Coulson. "If this was your idea, if this was your suggestion, I'm requesting a new liaison from SHIELD."

"Hey!" Barton stepped forward and shoved at Steve, who pushed him back hard enough to send him sprawling.

"Okay, I understand that you're upset," Coulson said, his eyes on Barton who was rolling effortlessly to his feet and looking pissed off.

"Do you?" Steve snapped. 

"For the record, none of what happened was at my suggestion or recommendation. But as I believe you are aware, Captain, my so-called 'authority' over this group is nominal, at best."

"It was my idea." Tony pushed the face plate up. "Don't hit!" He stepped back when Steve turned on him. Steve figured he was done losing his temper and he did not want a brawl on the streets with Iron Man, so he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Coulson finally put his gun away. "Stark, I hope you have a damn good explanation for this unauthorized team exercise, because from where I'm standing Captain Rogers is right. Every single one of you did your best to impede your battle leader."

"The sniper was back."

The deep breathing went out the window as Steve swung on Tony. The faceplate slammed down just as Steve's fist made contact and Iron Man went sailing right into the Hulk, who picked him up and tossed him aside like so much garbage. Tony got control in an instant and rocketed back to the group, landing far away from Steve and keeping the faceplate down. 

"Why the hell didn't you say so? Why didn't you tell Coulson, at least? God damn it, Stark, we have protocols in place for when team members are compromised!" Steve yelled. Barton was there again but holding his hands up, keeping Steve back.

"Chill out, Cap, maybe it was a stupid idea but it was the best we had in the middle of the fight, okay?" Barton said, his hands held high and placating. "Coulson didn't know, because if we had told him he would have called you off the field."

Coulson nodded begrudgingly. "That's true."

Tony finally let the faceplate snap up again. "I saw him, creeping around one of the high rise apartment buildings over there. I thought Hawkeye could take him out, since my hands were busy with about six Doombots. Hawkeye had his own problems. So we just came up with the idea to keep you off your game so he couldn't get a shot. Had to pull the others into it because damn it, you were all over the fucking place." Tony sighed. "I think he got two shots off-"

"Four." Natasha added flatly. "That's why I brought his building down, he was getting too close."

"I knew that was you!" Steve pointed at her. 

She shrugged, like sending a ten story building down nearly on his head was a trifle. "The Winter Soldier is not going to _stop_ just because a building falls out from under his feet. But it kept him occupied until the fight was over and his window of opportunity was gone." 

Barton ran his fingers through his hair. "So you're certain this time."

She glared at him. "I was certain _last_ time. This time, though, I'm not the only one." She turned to Tony.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the Winter Soldier."

Steve shook his head. "You can't know that."

Coulson sighed. "I supposed you broke into the SHIELD encrypted file on him?"

"Damn right I did, Agent. And yes, based on the heat signature I picked up and recorded — you're welcome — the guy was missing his left arm."

Natasha nodded solemnly. 

Steve frowned, thrown by the comment, because that had not been mentioned in any of the briefs he had been given access to. "You're telling me one of the top assassins in the world is missing an arm?" He asked, knowing his incredulity showed through but unable to hide it because the idea was ridiculous.

"He lost it a long time ago. Perhaps he never had it. I don't know." Natasha rubbed her arms as if warding off the cold. "He had a specialized prosthetic, like nothing I've seen since." She raised her chin at Tony. "Maybe the armor. But high tech, beyond anything that should have been possible. Don't ask me about it, all I ever saw was the hand."

"Great." Steve sighed, post-battle hunger and exhaustion hitting him all at once since his anger was fading. He turned to Tony. "So I suppose I need to thank you?"

"You're fucking welcome." Tony blasted off. 

"That went well," Barton said, looking at the jet trail Iron Man left behind. Hulk raised a fist and started smashing on the destroyed SUV again.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve knew that as things stood, he was being more of a liability to the team than a functioning member of it, but unless they could flush out the Winter Soldier he was stuck in the middle of the mess. After the disaster of a mission with the Doombots, Steve knew that was going to have to finesse his team a little bit more carefully than he had been, if only because he had underestimated their collective protective instinct. It was flattering, but he wasn't a 110 pound asthmatic anymore, and he really could take care of himself when he needed too.

First, though, Steve knew he had to mend fences with Tony. It always unsettled him when they fought, and reminded him of the times when Bucky had gotten tired of his stubborn streak and threatened to walk out on their friendship. Bucky never did, of course, and Steve suspected Tony wouldn't either, but Steve still felt like he needed to put things right if only so he wouldn't stay up half the night filling up another sketchbook with his nightmares. 

He asked JARVIS to order a few pizzas, including Tony's favorite, then showed up outside of Tony's workshop with them in his hands as a peace offering. Tony glared at him as he walked in but didn't chase him out. 

"An apology," Steve said formally, putting the pizzas on a small free space on the workbench Tony was at. 

Tony's lips twitched. "It would probably be good form to ask you to stay and eat them with me." 

"Probably."

"So sit down already," Tony said, waving at a random stool. Steve dragged it over and they sat eating in silence for a while.

"I do appreciate you taking the time to save my life, Tony. I'm not ungrateful. I'm just frustrated by this whole situation," Steve said after he finished his Hawaiian-style pie. 

Tony nodded. "I get that. Believe me, I get that. Thing is, not much we can do about it right now."

"I'm thinking about how we can flush him out. Lure him in to the open, drop a net on him, something," Steve sat back, crossing his arms. He caught the way Tony's eyes wandered over him, the kind of look Steve had seen a lot of men get at the bath houses and had himself gotten more than a few times during the USO tour. He dutifully kept his own eyes on the wall opposite him. 

Tony nodded, but then shook his head. "The complete file on the Winter Soldier is thick, really fucking thick. Goes back to 1953. For all of that, it doesn't contain a single photo — generic descriptions, height and weight and he only has one arm. Might be a brunette or a very unnatural blond. No photos." 

Steve understood what Tony was saying. If they couldn't even capture the guy on film, there was no way he was going to slip up and let SHIELD nab him. "This is going to be a problem for the team."

"Yeah, well, today wasn't our finest hour. But we needed you out there, Cap, your our leader and you're, well, Captain America. Even tripping you up barely slowed you down. If Coulson had pulled you from the field we'd probably still be out there trying to stop those damn robots." Tony sighed. It was the first time Tony had referred to Steve as their team leader without a trace of sarcasm, and Steve wallowed in that victory privately for a moment.

"Whoever is orchestrating this is being careful, though. That might work to our advantage." Steve turned the idea over in his head. "We basically _know_ when the Winter Soldier will show up, and who his target is-"

"If this plan is about making you into some kind of bait, I'm vetoing it right now," Tony said, his voice thick with anger. Steve looked up at him in surprise. Tony turned away to pick up some gadget but not fast enough to hide his blush. 

"Tony," Steve started, but Tony shook his head.

"No. He's too good, Steve. You heard Natasha, she's scared shitless of him even if she won't admit that out loud. Anyone who can set her nerves on edge is someone we have to take very seriously, and I'm not letting you put your life on the line like that."

"Letting me? Tony, our lives are on the line every time we assemble."

"This is different."

"Not really." 

"Damn it!" Tony threw the gadget and it hit the wall, breaking into pieces. "Yes, it is! Get it through your head, Steve: you're important." Tony leaned forward, his hands on the table in front of him. "Hell it hurts to even say that. I hated you for years, hated you like you were the perfect older brother I could never match. Dad worshiped you."

Steve kept his mouth shut tight. This was part of Howard's history as much as it was Tony's, and even if Steve didn't want to hear it or Tony had his facts wrong about what kind of 'friend' Steve was to his father, Tony had a right to speak about it unimpeded. 

"I mean it. He's the one who got that Rogers Memorial Wing established at the Smithsonian. He leased the licensing rights from the Army in 1955, did you know that? All the memorabilia, the comics, the fucking movies — that was all Dad. Hell he could have given up weapons manufacturing and still been rich just on you."

"Seems excessive? I don't know what to tell you, Tony. He was a good friend."

"I'm telling you that I understand why." Tony stood up and a chill went down Steve's spine, wondering if Tony had figured out his secret. He held himself still, waiting for the next blow. 

Tony sighed. "I understand why because I finally met you myself. You're…hell, you're all of it. The myth, the man, the legend. I get it. You're special, there is literally no one who can come close to the man you are."

"You said it on the helicarrier, Tony: it's all out of a bottle," Steve said, equal parts relieved that Tony had not sussed out his secret but also weary of the hero-worship that everyone seemed to fall into around him. 

Tony squinted at him, as if untangling a problem. "No, I was wrong. The body, yes, and all that comes with it, yes. That is thanks to Erskine and Dad. But see, Erskine chose you for a reason, and that has nothing to do with your deep baby blues," Tony pointed at his face and Steve tried not to blush. "It's because you are an amazing human being. You're smart, honest, loyal, fierce, protective, and a lot of other positive-sounding adjectives that I'm sure your fans already rave about at length. Celebrity crushes are a dime a dozen but when it comes to you, it's all gold-plated truth: you're a good man. And if we lose you…if _I_ lose you, if I fuck something up and let you get killed, then the whole world loses something important." Tony sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "I was ready to hate you on sight, and I did. I tried to keep hating you after we met, after we became Avengers, but you…you're better than that, Steve. You're a better man and you drag me up to your level, kicking and screaming. At this point, I know why Dad kept looking for you. If something like that happened today, I'd spend every dime I have trying to find you." 

Steve sat, staring at Tony, unable to form words. His shock must have shown on his face, because Tony shrugged.

"I'm not one to talk people up, so take it while you can get it. I'm just saying, you're not putting yourself out there as bait for the Winter Soldier on my watch."

"I think I am anyway," Steve finally got out, his brain still trying to parse Tony's crazy declaration. 

"True. Hell." Tony practically fell down onto his chair. "Honestly, Steve, if he's as good as everyone says he is, I'm not sure why you aren't already dead." He tipped his head up to stare at the ceiling.

Steve sat up straight as the comment hit him. "Because he's not trying to kill me."

"What?" Tony looked at him in confusion for less than a second before the penny dropped. "Shit! JARVIS, where's Agent?"

"He's retired to his apartment, Sir. I am unsure of his current activity."

"Well break in, I don't care if he's banging his archer over the kitchen table, I need him here. Now."

"I'll pass along the message, Sir," JARVIS said primly and Steve tried not to smile. 

"Only you could make an AI that sasses you, Tony."

Tony paused. "Yeah, Dad never liked it when I gave things personality," he said, his movements guarded and his expression wary. 

"No, Howard didn't mess around like that. He ran a tight ship. Which was great, but I like JARVIS."

Tony's smile was incandescent, as if Steve had just won a gold medal. "See? I knew you were a man of good taste."

Steve spun on the stool, proud of himself for a moment, while Tony pulled something up on one of the holoscreens. A couple of minutes later, Coulson and Barton showed up.

"My coq au vin has exactly 23 minutes left and then I still have to do the sauce reduction, so this better be fucking good, Stark." Barton sniped, standing with his arms crossed. Coulson, dressed in worn jeans and a floppy sweater, actually rolled his eyes. Steve wondered if he had suddenly landed in an alternative universe. 

"The Winter Soldier has missed more shots than he's taken," Tony said simply, staring at Coulson. 

Coulson and Barton both looked taken aback. Barton glanced in confusion at Coulson.

"That's impossible. The Winter Soldier doesn't miss," Coulson finally said.

Steve nodded. "Except for the fact that he has, every time he's taken a shot at me."

"And we didn't even pick up on that because we were all thinking about him like a regular, off-the-rack assassin. Of course Steve's hard to hit, especially when the rest of the Avengers are working to make sure of it. But!" Tony snapped his fingers. "This is not just anyone. This is the Winter Soldier—"

Coulson held up his hand and Tony actually stopped. 

"JARVIS, get Natasha here. Now," Coulson said simply. Within two minutes Natasha walked in. Coulson filled her in and she looked for a long time at the pages displayed on the screen in front of her, although it was clear she wasn't actually reading them.

Finally, she nodded slowly, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "I agree. He's not trying to kill Rogers."

Steve rolled his shoulders. "You guys realize this makes no sense, right? If his job is to NOT kill me during a battle, then why even show up? Stay home and sleep in, take a vacation. That would be easier." 

"Allow me," Tony said with a small bow towards Coulson, then turned to Steve. "The reason you accept a contract, show up, and then do a shitty job is because you want the money but you can't do the work."

"Speaking from experience?"

Tony shifted one shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. "Time honored tradition with military contracts. Half the time Stark Industries was called in as Mr. Fix-it when the former contractor—and I'm not naming names, but I'm talking about Hammer—couldn't actually manufacture the product the military paid for."

Steve nodded because it seemed not much had changed since 1945. "Right, so the Winter Soldier shows up, takes a few close shots, enough to convince his employer that he's trying really hard, and then banks the money."

"The real question is, why won't he take the shot?" Barton said. Everyone turned to him. "Look, you guys know my history, so I'm telling you from a _professional capacity_ that he probably only got half the money upfront, and won't get the other half until Steve's brains are on the sidewalk. So trust me, in that situation, you have a lot of motivation not to fuck around. He's wasting his own money and more importantly, his reputation, to not take a shot we all know he could take." He shrugged. "You can't tell me it's because he's sentimental about Captain America."

Natasha sighed. "Perhaps."

Phil blinked at her slowly. "Something else here that you conveniently managed to forget until now?" His voice was sharp, striking at Natasha like a whip. Steve almost cringed in sympathy, but she seemed impervious. She turned to Steve instead of answering Coulson.

"He knows you."

"Everyone knows Steve, Nat. In case you missed it? He's Captain America." Clint waved a hand around.

She shook her head. "He has a heart of stone. He could be kind, and funny, and he was handsome; he was charming, and he made you want to trust him. When I was a child, I adored him." She ground her teeth for a second. "But he is all lies, and he loves nothing and no one. He is a master at playing games, so there is nothing obvious that we can see of his motives here. But he knows you, and you know him, and that might be affecting his decisions."

Steve crossed his arms. "You either explain this to us now, or I'm requesting Fury to haul you in for questioning."

She gave him a nasty look before turning to look up, which was everyone's default position when addressing JARVIS. "Please show us an image of Bucky Barnes."

"What?!?!" Steve's stomach dropped. 

A clean black and white photo of Bucky, taken by one of the combat photographers that had trailed after the Commandos for a while, materialized before them. Natasha's shoulders actually slumped in a rare display of vulnerability. "This is the Winter Soldier."

"No." Steve stood up. "This isn't even funny, Agent Romanoff, and I will be filing a complaint—"

"It's him!" She yelled at Steve, and the room went quiet. Taking a deep breath she pointed at the picture. "I know that face. I know that man. I will never forget him, whether I want to or not. He was our hero and our nightmare. He loved us and destroyed us. I…" She trailed off and wrapped her arms around herself. Clint walked over to her slowly and put his arm around her shoulders. She let him, but stood stiff and uncomfortable in his hold.

"He died in 1945." Steve shook his head. "There's no way he could have survived—" He broke off, staring at the picture. "No. Oh, no." 

"Captain?" Coulson broke the extended silence. 

"The super soldier serum," Steve said, horror washing over him.

"Barnes was not a part of that program." Coulson sounded confused. 

"No, he wasn't. But he…we never put it in our report. We never talked about it." Steve collapsed on the stool, confusion and shock coursing through him like a heat wave, making him unsteady. He felt a hand on his neck, soothing and calm, and looked up at Tony. 

"What didn't you report, Steve?" Tony asked quietly.

It seemed easier to admit their secret to Tony, as opposed to most of his team, so he kept his gaze on Tony as he talked. "When I rescued him from Schmidt's stronghold, he wasn't in the containment cages with everyone else. He was…God help us, he was in one of the laboratories. Strapped down to a table. He was whole but worked over, burning up with fever. I half carried him out." Steve took a deep breath. "By the time we were walking back to camp, he was fine. He walked into camp on his own power, fully armed, fresh as a damn daisy."

"Shit."

Everyone looked at Phil, who covered his mouth sheepishly. Clint rolled his eyes and shook his head. Phil coughed to clear his throat. "You're saying Schmidt may have administered the serum to him."

Steve nodded. "They did something to him. We never talked about it, and honestly I never saw any noticeable changes in him. He never got seriously injured during our raids with the Howling Commandos, so I would not have noticed accelerated healing or anything like that. I just assumed I got him out of that laboratory _before_ they did anything."

"But it's possible you didn't," Tony offered gently, his fingers still rubbing circles against Steve's skin. 

"If—if!—Natasha is right, and Bucky is the Winter Soldier, there is no other explanation." Steve leaned into Tony's hand, past caring if anyone noticed. 

"Doesn't explain his age, though." Phil frowned. "You age, Captain. A little more slowly than the rest of us, but not significantly. You will get old, eventually."

"They kept him in cryogenic storage," Natasha said, her voice raw. "They only brought him out when they needed him for a job, or training. It was one reason for the extreme brainwashing they used on him. We all knew it, that he sometimes fought going back under. That sometimes he remembered _too much_. We found it terrifying, to think they would do that to us." Natasha sidled in closer to Clint. "I think, for some of us, they did. Not me, I was too young. But…yes, some of us, perhaps."

The fever in Steve's blood dropped into an icy cold. "Natasha…was he, did he?" He was not even sure what he was asking, but she looked at him with understanding in her eyes. 

"He didn't know who he was, outside of what they told him. He liked to be called Yakov, but no one knew if that was his real name or just an affectation."

"Yakov is 'James' in Russian, right?" Tony asked. 

Natasha nodded. "James is the Anglicized version of Jacob. Jacob, Yakov." She shrugged.

Steve almost felt like crying or hitting something or both. "He hated anyone calling him James."

Natasha pulled herself together. "He did age some. I would have put him in his late-thirties. But yes, the cryogenic storage kept him young, much as being frozen in the ice did the same for you." 

Steve bit down on his hysterics. It was unmanly to fall apart over the idea that his best friend (and lover, he selfishly screamed at himself) had lived, but only to be brainwashed and tortured and sent out as a ruthless, soulless weapon. Given how Tony's hand tightened on him, holding his neck as if trying to keep Steve from jumping out of his skin, he didn't think he was particularly successful at hiding his emotions. He took a deep breath.

"We need to bring him in alive."

Clint snorted. "Sure, and I want a pony."

Natasha cuffed his head. "You had plenty of ponies as a boy in the circus."

"Don't get all Russian on me, you know what I meant." Clint let go of her and crossed his arms. "Look, since this started Fury has been pulling us in to run scenarios on how to do just that, bring the Winter Soldier in alive, but trust me, none of them end with him breathing."

Coulson nodded. "I assure you, Captain, bringing him in alive is a priority. Just unlikely." 

"Sure, if he were human," Tony said, walking over to his desk. "But he's not. If he's working off the super soldier serum, then the only way to kill him is blow him to pieces, or decapitation."

Steve cringed. "Tony—"

"What I'm saying is, no one has really tried hard enough because they thought that _hard enough_ would kill him. Look, if Steve went rogue, what would it take to bring him down?"

"A Hulk tranq," Clint answered promptly, and Steve frowned. It made sense that Fury would have contingency plans in place for that scenario, but he'd never thought about it before. Clint kept talking. "Even that only has a projected effectiveness factor of thirteen minutes. We'd have to get adamantium restraints on him in that time frame. He would still be dangerous, but a mobile cryogenic unit could be called in within twenty-five minutes, if we're talking the east coast." He glanced over at Steve. "Sorry."

Steve shook his head. "No apologies necessary, soldier."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Tony sighed. "My point is that it can be done."

"The real issue is how much we lose by trying." Coulson looked at Steve again. "He's not trying to kill you. Chances are he's taken the contract because someone really does want you dead, and wants it to look like a by-product of an Avengers Mission. The Winter Sold—Barnes knows he can convincingly 'miss' his shots and keep you alive. If we pull him in his employer will just go hire someone else."

Clint shrugged. "If we pull him in we can extract the information about who hired him."

"Not if he doesn't want you to." Natasha snorted, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. 

"He can't delay forever. At some point he has to take the shot." Tony turned to Coulson. "If he was that damn interested in keeping Steve alive, he could just send us an email with the name of the asshole who hired him. He's an infamous assassin known the world over for his brilliance and perfect markmanship, so don't tell me he doesn't have Steve's addy in his contacts list."

Steve's head throbbed as the complex reasons that Bucky would play that kind of game unfurled like a web around him. He rubbed his temples with his thumbs. "Stark has a point. Bucky's got to pull the trigger or bow out. He's playing it this way for reason. The better option is to throw him off his game."

"Do you have any idea what he might be thinking?" Coulson asked, and it was all Steve could to not to break out in laughter. 

"Do _not_ make the mistake that this is Bucky Barnes." Natasha's voice hit them all hard and true. "He is not that person. He doesn't think like an American, he is a product of the Red Room. He is ruthless and cunning and a deceiver. He's playing two ends against the middle and we don't know who any of the players are."

"You yourself said he might be holding back because he remembers Steve," Coulson said.

She shook her head once. "That doesn't mean he isn't using that very fact as part of his plan."

"Well, shit, Nat — that's pretty fucking complicated." Clint laughed caustically. 

"He was the measure against which we were held. He loved us dearly, he bought us candy, he killed my best friend by breaking her neck when we were ten." She faced Steve with a snarl on her face. "You trust him, and he will kill us all."

Steve recoiled, horrified, but Tony stepped towards her, seemingly unfazed. "You think his end game is the Avengers?" 

"I'm saying we don't know much of anything, and everything we do know can be used against us." 

After a long moment of complete stillness, Coulson spoke up. "Stark, you zeroed in on the Winter Soldier before." 

Tony nodded. "Yes. He registered as a normal human with only one arm. His tech didn't show up, which I think is probably a bigger problem. But yes, I can find him. In fact now that JARVIS has his vitals tagged, I'll be able to ping him as soon as he's in radius of the suit's sensors."

"I always carry two Hulk tranqs on me. Banner's request." Clint shrugged. "If I know where to aim, I can take the Winter Soldier down."

"It is a risk; we don't know for a fact that he's working off the super soldier serum." Coulson looked conflicted, his arms folded and a worried crease to his brow. "If we're wrong and nail him with that level of tranquilizers, he'll be dead before he hits the ground."

"I once saw him jump from a four story building, resulting in a compound fracture of his left femur. He was walking normally within 48 hours." Natasha was still staring at the wall.

Steve turned to Phil. "Sounds like he is."

Phil studied him for a moment. "If we're wrong, we'll be killing Bucky Barnes."

Steve felt more than heard the room go silent. Tony's eyes flicked between them, icy and cold with a scientist's understanding of impact, while Natasha refused to look at any of them. Steve turned to Clint. "Next time we're out, if you get a shot, take it. Take him down."

"Cap—" Tony started, but Steve waved him off.

"It's a risk we have to take. At this point, it's him or me." No one moved to stop him as Steve got up and walked out on steady legs.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, so very delayed. And I can't give guarantees of timely updates, but progress has been made, it's not abandoned, and it's...going to be much longer than originally intended. Mannnn, I hate WIPs. :/

Everyone left Steve alone the next day, but by evening Tony found him on the uppermost patio deck. The height of the building always made it a chilly location, but Tony had fitted it with large heating lanterns (one of the better inventions of the future in Steve's opinion, rating right up there with wet wipes). Steve was tucked under one, a sketchbook on his lap, mapping out the skyline with colored pencils. 

Tony kept quiet as he meandered around the deck furniture and the currently-quiet hot tub until he sat down in the chair next to Steve. The behavior was odd enough to make Steve pause, looking up at him.

"Dad never talked about Bucky. Hell, no one does. He was, like, your sidekick. Kind of forgettable, really." His words cut like knives, but his voice was soft. There was no challenge to it, just a simple observation, offered up like a gift. 

Steve looked back out over the city. "Imagine someone saying the same thing about Pepper, a century from now."

Tony took a deep breath. "Ouch." Then he laughed. "Although it's not like you and Bucky were going to get married or anything."

Steve laughed on cue, even if the words hurt more than the earlier ones had. Then he registered what Tony had said. "You've proposed to Pepper?"

Tony startled. "What? No!"

"But you just said—"

"It's what people do. Eventually. Down the road. It was just me talking."

"Uh huh." Steve shook his head. "You love your girl, Tony. You should, what did Darcy say? Put a ring on it?"

"She is banned from this property, forever, starting now." Tony scowled. 

Steve laughed. It felt good. He reached out and slapped a hand down on Tony's shoulder. "Whatever they call it these days, in my time we called it getting hitched. Happened to some of the best guys I knew." He laughed again as Tony squirmed under his grip, then let go.

"Yeah yeah. Even my father leveled up, and he never wanted to get married."

Hearing about Howard was not quite as painful as talking about Bucky, and it was a rare day that Tony opened up about his father. Steve kept quiet, nodding to show he was listening. 

"I mean, I think he cared for mom. Every once in a while I'd catch them talking about something, politics usually or engineering, and I could tell they were friends deep down under all the disappointment and anger. They liked each other, even if they didn't want to in the end. And I know he loved me…not like most dads would, it was pretty clear he had no earthly clue what to _do_ with me, but yeah. He tried, sometimes. But see, that's the thing, I always got the feeling he did it—wife, kid, nanny, boarding school—because that was just what he was supposed to do. And I…I don't want to do that." He looked lost and sad for a moment, before sharpening up again. "God. Not what you needed to hear tonight, Cap. I came out to see how you were doing with the whole Winter Soldier thing."

Steve looked down at his cityscape, a violent sketch in reds, oranges and black, a city bleeding its heart out on the page. "I could probably do better." He closed the book. 

Tony frowned and settled back in the chair. "You want to talk about it? Because I'm honestly kind of a poor choice for that. But I'm here. Or we could talk about me…although I'd need a drink if we go that way."

"You already said it, Tony: Bucky was my sidekick. Dead and forgotten, even Phil doesn't know that much about him. Did you know he practically lived with me? At my flat?"

"At Rogers' House? No, had no idea. How did that work? That room is a fucking closet, could you even fit a full grown man in there?" Tony's lips quirked up at the corner.

"Yeah yeah, I was a runt. Make a joke I haven't heard, Stark, go ahead and try." Steve huffed out a small laugh. "But to me the place is half empty. I had an electric percolator I smuggled in, cost me a week's pay, but gave it to the McLeod boys when I shipped out for boot camp. Spread out my groceries with everyone there, no reason to let it all rot while I was at war. Mrs. Jameson got my ration books, she had three kids and a shiftless drunk for a husband. She—" He stopped, horrified. 

"Steve?"

He closed his eyes. "She watched out for me. She was a newer tenant but took a shine to the small guy, you know? When I told her I got into the Army she promised to put a blue star banner in the window for me. Shit." 

Tony spread his hands. "You lost me."

"It's a flag you put in the window to show you have a family member in the military. Blue star for each person at war, and you change them to gold if they die in service. She felt bad that I had no one to do that for me, no one left to care that I was doing my duty." Steve leaned back in the chair and held the quiet for a long moment, remembering the frail woman who always seemed so grateful for even the smallest kindness. "That's what was missing at the museum, all those parts of me I took for granted. And Bucky was part of that, the biggest part, and he wasn't there at all."

Tony let out a long breath. "There really isn't any part of your life that isn't fucking tragic."

Steve tipped his head to look over at Tony. "Thanks for sugar coating that for me, bub."

"I'm the guy missing half his chest. Have you seen my x-rays? It's like pick-up stix in here." He tapped the glowing disk in his chest. "If you want sugar coating, we have to call in…someone else. Not anyone on our team, we're all assholes. Even Pepper, although she's classy about it. Hmm. Thor will explain how fucked you are in iambic pentameter so glorious you'll forget that you're fucked, that might work. Or you know what, forget it. You're just fucked."

"Yeah." Steve looked back at the horizon. They sat in companionable silence for a while. "So you gonna propose or not?"

Tony coughed so hard he sat up. 

"I didn't mean me! I meant Pepper!" Steve practically yelled. 

Tony waved his hands around while trying to breathe. "Don't do that to a guy!"

"I meant _Pepper_!" 

"And here I got my hopes up," Tony said with a comical leer that seemed a little forced.

Steve rolled his eyes obligingly. 

"I am not going to propose, to you or to Pepper or to anyone. So no." Tony leaned back in the chair again. 

"Congratulations, you're nothing like your father."

Tony actually looked caught off guard. "What?"

"Howard once told me that he would get married, whether he wanted to or not. Wife and kids, that was expected of him and by God he was going to meet his obligations. But not you, nope, you don't want to get married so you're not gonna. Good choice." Steve pulled his arms up and rested his hands behind his head, waiting.

"Fuck you if you're trying to use reverse psychology on me. I don't want to get married because I don't want to get married."

"Good."

"Fine."

Steve waited. 

"Dad didn't want to get married but he did; I don't want to get married and I'm not. See? Completely different."

"That argument only works if you don't actually want to get married, Tony." Steve grinned. 

"I don't!"

"You're the one who suggested you were."

"I was just running my mouth!" Tony yelled. 

Pepper's cool voice drifted over to them from the elevator. "Nothing new there. What have you done now, Tony?" 

" _Nothing_!" 

Steve gave Pepper a raised eyebrow as she walked up to where they were seated. 

"God damn it Rogers, you keep your fucking mouth shut," Tony growled, pointing at him aggressively. 

"Oh, now, that doesn't make me suspicious at all." Pepper quirked her eyebrow right back at Steve. 

"Steve's baiting me. He's ganging up on me." Tony pouted, and he was almost adorable. Steve tried not to laugh. 

Pepper shook her head. "There is only one of each of you, he can't 'gang up' on you."

"Have you looked at him lately? He's easily two of me. Three of you! Definitely 'ganging up' and I do not mean in the 'gang bang' kind of way, which would be a different conversation entirely."

Steve palmed his face while Pepper groaned. "What have I told you about topics not meant for conversation?"

"You always side against me." Tony flopped back into his chair.

Pepper simply smiled and sat down on the edge of Tony's lounge chair so she was facing Steve. "I was hoping you would side with me in going for dinner." 

"That time?" Tony squinted out across the darkening landscape. "Hey, I guess so. C'mon, Rogers, let's see what the chef has set out for tonight."

"I think she went with Indian curry," Pepper said. 

Even after living in the tower for so many months, it still felt odd to Steve to have someone else cooking for him every day. It was like living in a restaurant, and while Tony still liked to order out for pizza or Chinese on a regular basis, most of the time food just _appeared_ and the dirty dishes _disappeared_ and Steve's sense of justice, still so closely aligned with the labor movements of his youth, always felt guilty about that. And he was not quite through with being artistic and moody, he thought to himself with no small amount of chagrin. "Save me a plate." 

"Ah, she'll leave the sideboard out until you eat. You make her feel useful, licking the pans the way you do." Tony tugged at Pepper's hips until she scooted onto his lap, laughing softly.

Steve flipped the page in his notebook and sketched idly as Tony bickered about dessert and Pepper swatted at his wandering hands, because Tony simply had no concept of "socially appropriate," especially in the private sphere of the tower. The sun had set while they talked and the outdoor lights were on, just bright enough for Steve to see what he was working on but not so much that they intruded on the comfortable mood that had settled over him. He looked up to see Pepper leaning against Tony's chest, wrapped up in his arms while they murmured to each other in low voices. Steve kept sketching, his hands marking familiar territory in mapping out their bodies, and relaxing in the warm familiarity of it all. It was no different than the nights Bucky had sat on his bed reading _Amazing Stories_ while Steve practiced drawing and the neighbors two apartments over played radio comedy shows loud enough for the whole floor to hear. He stopped after a few minutes, realizing where his thoughts had gone, and stared at the romantic drawing in his hands of Tony and Pepper nuzzling like newlyweds. 

"I'm heading in," he offered pointlessly as he stood up, tucking his book under his arm and aiming for the elevator. 

"Steve." Tony's voice was oddly stern. 

Steve faced him again. Pepper was still on his lap, looking confused.

"We'll bring Bucky in alive. I promise. You're not going to lose him again, not on my watch." Tony's hands clinched tightly around Pepper's waist. "Not on my watch."

"Thanks, Tony." Steve nodded in acknowledgment, then turned and left them alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are at all curious about what's going through my head, and what contributed to the delay, a non-spoilery commentary is [here at my tumblr](http://mikes-grrl.tumblr.com/post/73005457871/sins-of-the-father-update).


	13. Chapter 13

Steve was used to being thrown off his game, it was a long-standing feature of his childhood, but he wondered if he was getting sloppy in his "old age" because amidst all of his concern and worry over Bucky, not to mention the very real risk that the Winter Soldier posed to him, Steve had not been prepared to get side-swiped by the World Security Council. 

He stared at Fury, who stared back at him. Steve rapped on the conference table with his knuckles, hard enough to vibrate the glass just nearly to the point of breaking it. "You can't have her."

Natasha, sitting across from him, raised one eye brow in disbelief. "You did not."

"Oh, he did!" Tony looked utterly delighted. Bruce sat with his face in his hands, laughing or possibly crying, while Clint very unsubtly scooted his chair closer to the door. Coulson, as usual, looked implacable. 

"I don't think that's your choice to make. We've got a situation, and despite her new high-profile status, the Black Widow is still our best choice for dealing with this situation."

"No."

"She's still a SHIELD agent, Captain," Fury said, sitting up straight. His voice carried as a deep chord through the room, through Steve's _bones_ , but Steve did not care. 

"The WSC can clean up their own messes. We're the Avengers and we fight to protect the world and its citizens, not as the lackeys for a governmental agency that, as far as I can tell, as no legal right to exist."

"I assure you it's quite real."

Steve leaned over the table. "One of the best things I ever heard about as a kid was the League of Nations. The Great War ruined my family and a lot of good men, and I while I always wanted to do my duty, up until Hitler marched into Poland I kind of hoped we had advanced far enough to avoid another war. The League didn't do such a good job keeping the peace, but when I woke up the one thing I hoped for was that it had somehow kept going. And it did, but as the United Nations. _Not_ as the World Security Council, which I can't even get a clear history on, despite my own clearance level. We don't know how the WSC was founded, we don't know where its budget comes from, and officially no one even knows who is on the council. When I tell you that I think it has no right to exist, I'm damn sure of what I'm talking about."

Tony was giving him a slow clap while Bruce looked impressed. 

"Now you're asking for a critical member of my team to get signed off on an assignment _for_ the WSC, for no other reason than your say so, and I'm sorry Director, but aren't you the guy who told me Coulson was dead?" He pointed at Coulson for effect. 

Fury almost grimaced, Steve could see his neck muscles twitching. Natasha was surprisingly quiet while they wrestled for her like school boys, which set Steve's nerves on edge. 

"What if I told you that the mission concerned the Winter Soldier?" Fury ground out. 

Steve leaned back in his chair. "Then I'd know you're lying, because right now Bucky is on the hunt for me."

"He's not working alone, Rogers." Fury mirrored Steve's pose, leaning back in his chair. "He was hired by someone, and whatever his reasons are for not pulling the trigger, someone out there sent him to kill you."

He was definitely lying, which Steve knew by default and also from the way Fury chose his words. He was too sure, too certain, about things they had no way of knowing. Bucky could be being paid to miss; after all, they didn't know _why_ he was pulling his shots so that meant every option was up for grabs. Fury would never settle on one answer unless he either knew it was true, in which case he was holding out on telling them why; or because he had no clue, in which case he would bluff. 

Steve would have bet his shield right then that Fury was bluffing. 

"How long will she be gone?" Steve tapped the conference table with his index finger. He was impressed by the way the rest of his team, especially Stark, was holding back. Everyone had eyes on him, and that was exactly the way he wanted it. 

"Two weeks, give or take." Fury acted friendly and contrite, and nothing about that sat well with Steve. 

He looked over at Natasha. "Your call."

She stared at her hands a moment, and that alone was enough to tell Steve that she was as in the dark as he was, or perhaps simply had a very different perspective than any of them about the situation. Sighing, she tipped her head towards Fury. "I'm still a SHIELD agent, and we need more answers than we've got."

Steve nodded at her, glad that she was picking up on the same issues he was concerning Fury's motivations, and was on the same page. Or so he hoped. "We'll manage, but don't dawdle."

"Dawdle? Who even _says_ that?" Stark rolled his eyes. 

"I do." Steve stood up. "Anything else?"

Fury took his time rising from his seat. "Nope. Hopefully it will be an uneventful two weeks for the Avengers. Try not to put yourself in the Winter Soldier's cross hairs in the meantime."

"Not like I have much choice in the matter, Director. Although I assure you I'm not keen on making myself a target. With the Widow off the board, that just makes us all vulnerable."

Fury nodded amicably, as if Steve had moved the conversation forward, but a quick glance towards Clint proved Steve's suspicion that Fury was simply sitting back to play a long game because Clint's posture was far too casual to be genuine. Steve figured someday Natasha would let Clint in on that tell, but for the moment, it was still useful. He shook hands with Fury and motioned for his team to follow him. Clint pulled out of the chair reluctantly with a long look at Natasha, but stomped out on Coulson's heels. Natasha stayed in the room, waiting with Fury for Hill to join her with details of the mission she was being sent on. Details that Fury had conveniently never gotten around to telling the Avengers. 

As they left SHIELD and got into Tony's limousine, Steve looked over his rag-tag group. Thor was absent, off again to spend time with Jane in her lab in England. With Natasha on a mission for SHIELD, the Avengers were down to Steve, Tony, Bruce, Clint, and Coulson. Spiderman and the Falcon were around more often than not but they kept their independence, which some days Steve could really appreciate.

"One hell of a speech, there, Cap. You mind letting the rest of the class in on what that was really about?" Tony knocked knees with Bruce as he talked while Bruce massaged his forehead. 

Clint sprawled over a side bench and yawned, jumping in before Steve could answer. "What I don't get is whether that was about the Winter Soldier or the WSC. Not both, I'm not buying that. Unless they are trying to catch Winter Soldier for themselves."

Tony snorted. "You bet your britches they are."

"'Bet your britches'?" Steve shook his head.

"You said 'dawdle'." 

"Guys," Bruce said and they all straightened up in their seats, even Clint. Bruce looked over at Coulson.

Coulson shrugged. "The Council wants Winter Soldier, they want Captain America, they want the Hulk, they want the Iron Man suit. This isn't news. We've had to maneuver politics and PR to keep their fingers out the Avengers. It's an ongoing nightmare for both Fury and Pepper." He shrugged again. "I'm inclined, however unlikely, to take Fury's explanation at face value: he's giving the WSC access to Black Widow's skills in exchange for information about the Winter Soldier."

Clint scratched his chin. "I don't remember Fury actually saying that."

Bruce laughed, but kept rubbing his temples. 

"No, he didn't, but it's what he meant." Steve stretched out, his feet almost reaching Bruce's across the length of the limo, and he tapped Bruce's shoe supportively. "I'm not keen on any Avenger being aligned with the WSC, even for a moment. But I trust Romanoff's judgment, and she wouldn't play Fury's game unless she thought we have something to gain by it."

"And by 'something' you mean, Bucky Barnes?" Tony asked, shewed and abrasive to the last.

Steve folded his hands over his stomach and looked straight at Tony. "Yes." 

No one said anything after that, which was fine by Steve. Everyone acted weird when talk about Bucky came up, and Steve understood why but he didn't tolerate it well. He missed Bucky more now that he knew he was alive (again? Still? Steve hadn't quite parsed that part yet). When most everyone he cared about was dead, it was easy to put those feelings in a box. He still hadn't contacted Peggy because the woman he knew in 1945 was a good as dead to him, and recent pictures of her — frail, still beautiful, still a commanding presence — were like looking at a different person entirely. It hurt, a dull aching bruise on his heart that never healed, but for nearly a year he had managed to push all of that away from his day-to-day life. The feelings of loneliness that welled up and ruined him in the deep hours of early morning nightmares never made it to the light of day, at least until Natasha had pointed at Bucky's photograph and identified him as the Winter Soldier. 

Tony had not been wrong when he said that most of Steve's life was tragic, and there was a numbing familiarity to that which was derailed by Bucky being alive, even if he was maybe brainwashed or an amnesiac or both. Steve was not accustomed to hope, it was antithetical to his childhood as an orphan passed around between distant relative, and then as a young gay artist during the dark, poverty-stricken 1930s. Hope was more painful than grief, in Steve's experience. 

He looked up to see Tony studying him, even while rubbing Bruce's back. Bruce, curled up into himself, was obviously starting down the road to another migraine. He suffered them regularly, apparently a side effect of _not_ letting the Other Guy out very often. It was definitely a curse, in Steve's opinion, no matter how much value the Hulk added to the team. But Steve understood more than most the pain of unintended consequences. 

Steve stared back, working hard to appear unbothered by Tony's flagrant curiosity. It was an odd game they were playing with Tony's interest both in Steve himself and in Steve's reactions to the news of Bucky's survival. Steve wasn't oblivious to the way Tony eyed him up sometimes. It wasn't as if Steve was unused to being ogled by people at that point, and it was hardly the privilege he had thought it was when he first started noticing way back on that blasted USO tour in '43. He represented an ideal, both literally and figuratively, and given what he knew of Tony's bisexuality, it was simply not something Steve thought counted for much. Far more worrying to him was keeping his own interests out of the spotlight, or Tony's cross hairs. As much as their friendship had grown since the Battle of New York, there remained an element of piss and vinegar too. Tony was _curious_ about Bucky and about how Steve felt about Bucky — something far too close to the relationship that Tony and Pepper shared, and Steve fully understood the irony of that. He wasn't scared of Tony finding out, not for his own sake anyway, but it seemed a short jump from Tony knowing that Steve was more than a little gay to discovering that his father had fucked Steve. 

Steve knew there were some things that even the closest friendships would not survive, and he suspected that was one of them. 

By the time they reached the Tower, everyone was ready to go their separate ways. Bruce quickly disappeared into his own suite to lie down and recuperate, while Tony wandered off to his lab and Clint dragged Phil off to lunch. Steve, left to his own devices, decided to retreat to his art studio, which was really the only room in the tower where he felt at home. Art supplies, unlike pretty much everything else, had not changed much in 70 years. Pastels and charcoal were still ungodly messy, oil paints were still frustrating, and ink still sharp. Steve put on his Dickies overalls, another constant that bizarrely made Steve _sentimental for the Great Depression_ , and he thought that if that wasn't a sign of how messed up his feelings were, nothing was. He started work on another city-scape painting, because people were just too dangerous, too overwhelming, for him to draw outside of his private notebooks.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty huge chapter for me, and I've sat on it for a long while. But it's place is here. It will probably be a few weeks before the next chapter goes up, though, just so you know. Thanks everyone for your patience and support!

Steve was in his studio sketching, grateful that the week was going by quietly. No one had heard official word about Natasha, but Clint kept telling him "she can take care of herself, _Dad_ " in such a deadpan voice that Steve assumed that meant he was secretly in contact with her and she was okay. For the time being.

Given the lull, which Steve wasn't going to complain about, he had taken to focusing on his art. His studio (the former third bedroom) was a large room with a bank of floor to ceiling windows, and Steve had used his mind-boggling affluence to stock it with supplies. He had, in fact, gone embarrassingly overboard, but other than his motorcycle there wasn’t much else for him to spend money on. He was considering hiring an art instructor in order to take his skills to the next level, but had not worked up the nerve to ask Pepper for help with that just yet.

“Steve, Agent Coulson is at your front door.” JARVIS said quietly, as he always did when Steve was wrapped up in his art.

“Oh sure. Let him in. Thanks, JARVIS.”

“My pleasure, sir. I’ll let him know you are in the studio.”

Steve stepped away from the charcoal cityscape he was working on. Charcoal dust was everywhere, and there was no sense in trying to bat it off of himself. He went over to the paint-splattered utility sink in the corner and scrubbed his hands and arms, and then his face for good measure. He was drying off when Phil stepped in, carrying a small wooden box.

“Steve.”

“Phil! To what do I owe the honor? You want to head to kitchen? I could use a snack.”

Phil nodded and followed him out to Steve’s kitchenette. Steve pulled out a cold Starbucks iced mocha bottle for Phil, and then set about making himself a couple of sandwiches.

Phil set the box on the table reverently before picking up his drink.

“So what’s that? Business?”

“No. Actually, it’s…it's quite personal. I’m here as a favor to Dr. Brenda Fulton.”

Steve stopped in his preparations and stared at Phil.

Phil put his drink aside and opened up the wooden box, which looked a lot like a fancy neck tie box. Inside, the aged green handkerchief sat on a sea of tissue paper. It was crinkled up in odd places from where it had been tied to Steve’s bed frame for over 70 years.

“Given the importance of this item, it was deemed too valuable to leave on display. She’s had a replica made, very exact, and tied it to the bed in precisely the same fashion as you originally had it. She argued with the board of directors of Rogers’ House to return this item to you.” Phil pulled his hands back from the box. “Honestly, you could petition to have all your belongings returned to you, and the museum would have a legal fight on its hands to stop you. I think this is their gesture in hopes that you won’t do that.”

Steve shook his head. “Of course I won’t.”

Phil smiled. “Of course not.”

Steve kept staring at the box. “They don’t know anything about this.”

“No, but it was clear to both Brenda and myself that it is something of tremendous sentimental value to you. I refuse to speculate about it, and it would be rude to ask. It is enough to know that something so precious as this is returned to its rightful owner.”

Steve laughed, feeling the bitterness in it. “Its rightful owner is dead, Phil.”

“I suspected as much from what you said. But again, not my business.”

Steve closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, the weight of his secrets bearing down on him even more as he made his decision. He was alone, there was no changing that, but he did have friends and he needed them to see him for who he was…even if it meant losing them instead. “You and Clint, you're a couple.”

Phil nodded once, his expression guarded, because while it was common knowledge it was not something Steve had ever felt comfortable discussing with Phil or Clint directly. He had gotten the feeling that Phil was shy about letting his childhood hero know that he preferred men, which Steve thought was understandable, if unfortunate.

“Let me tell you, things have changed, but not really. I’ve done a lot of online research lately. Honestly, after I woke up I wasn’t too interested in knowing much about my ‘legend.’ I kind of thought history would have forgotten about me.”

“Never,” Phil said earnestly.

Steve smiled. “I figured that out.” He paused while he put one sandwich together and took a large bite. Phil waited for him, sipping at his chilled coffee drink, which Steve knew he had a fondness for. It was the only reason Steve kept them on hand at all.

“It never, ever occurred to me that anyone would care about my sketch pad from the USO tour. In fact I can’t tell you the last place I saw it. So going online, seeing all the memorabilia out there that are my _things_ …someone paid thousands of dollars for one of the prop shields I used in the movies.”

“They are very rare.” Phil nodded.

“Not the point.” Steve returned to eating his sandwich, finishing it and starting to make another.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand the point you are trying to make.” Phil looked him, genuinely bothered by that fact.

“Everyone thinks they own a piece of me. That part of me survived all those years, and that the world knows who I am. You know how many official biographies have been written about me?”

“Six,” Phil answered sharply, then cringed.

“You’ve read them all, haven’t you?” Steve had to laugh. Phil blushed, which was probably only the second time Steve had seen that happen. He was a handsome man, not pretty like Bucky or debonair like Tony, but solid and confident and charming. Steve made up his mind, putting down the bread in his hands. “Well, Howard did a bang up job on white washing, I’ll give him that. I will bet money that none of those books mentioned this,” he said as he leaned over the counter between them, grabbed Phil’s jaw and held him still as he kissed him. He put his best into it, keeping it simple and not too lewd, just hinting with his tongue as he pressed their lips together wetly. Phil had locked in place, and Steve suspected he was holding his breath.

“No?” Steve said, letting go and pulling back.

Phil worked his jaw for a second, his blush gone crimson and his eyes dilated. He took a deep breath. “No. No, they did not mention…that.”

“It’s not new, if you were wondering. I lost my virginity to man named Mike when I was sixteen.” Steve concentrated on his sandwich.

Phil looked even more shocked. “Really?”

Steve thought about it. “No, actually, there was a whore named Eunice first. She looked like Clara Bow. But Mike…I think he’s the one who really counted.”

“A whore…named…” Phil stuttered.

“She was a present from Bucky. For my fifteenth birthday.”

Phil’s eyes went wide. “Sergeant Barnes bought you a hooker for your fifteenth birthday?”

“He wasn’t exactly ‘sergeant’ at the time.” Steve sighed. “I’m sorry about the kiss. I’m not making a pass, I was trying to explain something that is not easy for me to talk about.”

“To be fair, I think Clint will mostly be angry that there are no pictures of the event. He’s not a Captain America fan but he’s not blind, either.” Phil’s blush crept back up his neck as he focused on his coffee drink again.

Steve decided to get back to the topic before Phil melted in embarrassment. “That all happened in, I think, 1933? Even I think that was a hell of a long time ago. I just want you to understand that nothing is the same for me, here. The person I was then isn’t really much like what everyone seems to think.”

Phil’s hand reached out, his fingers tracing the edge of the open box. “Was this?”

Steve shook his head. “What this what?”

“Did it belong to, ah, your boyfriend?”

Steve looked at the handkerchief. “I never had a boyfriend, Phil. It didn’t work that way, back then, unless you were queer.”

Phil squinted. “You had sex with men, but you don’t think you’re queer?”

“It’s…different? Honestly I’m not sure I can explain it. But no, I never thought of myself that way. I got accused of being a fairy all the time, before the serum, but I wasn’t. Even if I did take it up the ass, I wasn’t a girl.”

Phil’s jaw dropped.

“Phil, I’ve been going to gay clubs and drag shows since I was fifteen.” Steve rubbed his face. “It’s not like I’m some damn virgin, here. I fucked nearly every girl in the lineup on the USO tour, and guys working the stage were always happy to offer blow jobs. The serum did a number on my urgency along with everything else.”

“Oh God, oh God. I’m not sure I needed to know that,” Phil whispered, his expression frozen in shock.

“I love Peggy, I really do. I thought she was the girl for me. I’m good with dames; the loose women and whores I don’t have a problem with, because you go to clubs enough and you get to know them. But she was a lady, and that made her different. I would have married her. But that doesn’t change the fact that I was in love with Bucky too. But as many times as we fucked he was never my ‘boyfriend’.”

“I’m honestly not sure what to do with this conversation, Steve.” Phil set his elbows on the counter and cradled his face in his hands.

“I’m trying to explain that things were different. Can you see that?”

“I do, I do. Believe me, I do.”

“This handkerchief belonged to a fairy who got raped and kicked to death in front of me. That stain there? Is his blood. I was 5’7”, barely 120 pounds and I couldn’t stop it. I don’t even know his name, he was just lost in the wrong neighborhood. He wasn’t much bigger than I was. We were both on our way home from gay clubs, late at night, and he got nabbed by some thugs. I knew them, hell I grew up with them, and all I could do was watch as they destroyed him, for no other reason than for wearing the wrong color scarf.

“And I thought things were different, and in a way they are, but then I read about that poor kid Matthew Sheppard. In 1998? Beaten to death and tied to fence. It’s still going on, but the difference now is that Matthew’s mother stood up for him, and people mourned him, and his death helped bring the issue to the forefront. But that kid?” Steve pointed at the box. “That kid, I never even knew his name. I just held him while he died.”

Steve hadn’t realized he was pushing his fists into the counter top hard enough to crack it until he felt Phil’s hand gently rest on his. “Steve.”

Taking a deep breath, he pulled back and looked at the damage. “Oh.”

“JARVIS, please put in a work order for a new kitchen counter for Steve,” Phil said, smiling wryly at Steve.

“It has been taken care of, Agent Coulson.”

Steve rubbed his face. “Thank you, JARVIS.”

“My pleasure, Captain.”

Phil stared at him for a few moments. “None of this needs to go outside of this room. But…look, you know I’m a fan of Captain America.”

Steve smiled. “So I’ve heard.”

Phil coughed. “Yes. Well. Anyway, hearing these things about your life, well, it’s surprising. But it doesn’t change my opinion of you. It doesn’t make you any less than who you are: Steve Rogers. I respect you and your history, all of your history.”

“You’re queer, Phil. A lot of other people won’t see it the way you do.”

“I’m still adjusting to Captain America knowing that I’m queer and not having a problem with that. Give me some room here.” Phil laughed. “But you’re right, some people won’t. All I’m trying to say is that you should be yourself, and let other people make up their own minds.”

Steve dragged the box holding the handkerchief towards him with one finger. “Howard wiped it all out, you know.”

“He knew?”

Steve looked up at Phil, surprised. “Doesn’t—oh.”

Phil’s eyes went even wider. “No, no no no. I really, really don’t want to know.”

“Too late, I think.” Steve shrugged, closing the box.

Phil cradled his face again. “There were always rumors about Howard Stark; pool boys, chauffeurs, that kind of thing. No one took it seriously. There’s a closed file at SHIELD that only Fury has access too, we all assumed it was a list of Howard Stark’s male lovers, but that was just gossip. I don’t think even his son took any of it seriously.” Phil looked up. “Fuck. Stark.”

“You mean junior, not senior?” Steve tried not to laugh, because it was the first time he had ever seen the normally unshakable agent look rattled.

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but please tell me you and Howard weren’t lovers.”

Steve shrugged again and Phil groaned, lowering his head to the counter top and resting on the back of his hands. “Oh. No.”

"Tony doesn’t have to know. It doesn’t matter, does it? That…it’s ancient history for you guys.”

Phil straightened up. “But not for you?”

“Howard and I were on-again/off-again pretty much up until I ditched into the ice. For me it’s only been, what, less than a year?”

“Jesus fuck. JARVIS, get Barton down here. Now. But don’t let Tony know, and hell, wipe this conversation from the records.”

“I’m sorry, but only Captain Rogers has authority to initiate or wipe recordings in his quarters.” JARVIS said simply.

“JARVIS, has any part of this conversation been recorded?” Steve asked.

“No sir, as you have not requested that service.”

“Okay, fair enough, but you’ve heard what was said, and I would appreciate you not informing Tony of the content of this discussion.”

“Is that an order, Captain?”

“Yes, JARVIS, it is. Can you follow it?”

“Yes I can. I will only be able to inform Sir that you had a conversation here with Agent Coulson, but not the subject or content of that conversation, and only if he asks specifically if a conversation took place.”

“Good enough. Thank you.”

Phil looked incredibly relieved.

“What? What the hell, Phil?” Clint slammed the front door open and charged in, looking ready for a fight. He stopped, taking in the casual tableau of Phil sitting at the counter and Steve standing in his kitchenette. “Lunch?”

“That’s what I like about you, Barton: your one track mind.”

“I didn’t even mention sex.” Clint raised his hands in innocence and Steve snorted. Clint closed the door behind him and walked over. “So, okay, is this a meeting of the sooper sekrit Captain America fan club? Do we have special handshake?”

“Steve’s gay, and he was having an affair with Howard Stark,” Phil said simply, which rattled Steve.

“I’m not gay.”

“HE WHAT?” Clint bounced up off the stool he almost sat down on. “You’re not? Wait, what?”

“Steve, I think by modern terminology, you qualify. As bisexual, at least.”

“I suppose so. It’s a shift for me. I’m normal.”

“Gay is normal,” Clint offered, looking very confused.

“It’s not…I can’t explain it. Sorry. I thought I was pretty normal, just a pervert.”

Clint’s jaw dropped and he stood motionless, for once stunned into silence.

“I think you broke him, Captain.”

“Sorry?”

Clint shook himself like a dog. “I really don’t understand what is going on. Phil, explain to me what is going on.”

“We are having a generational cultural clash of monumental proportions, and Steve was Howard Stark’s lover.”

“Okay.” Clint sat down, nodding. “None of this was in any of his biographies, huh?”

Phil shook his head solemnly.

“Look, it’s a long story. And I don’t know why Phil called you in on this conversation,” Steve said, glaring at Phil.

“Oh, I get that part.” Clint nodded. “This could be bad.”

“Why?” Steve huffed. “Why does it matter? Like I said: this is ancient history now. Howard’s dead and his son doesn’t know or need to know.”

“Were you in love with Howard?” Phil settled on his elbows, and the conversation suddenly turned into a debriefing.

“No. I was…it was always Bucky, for me. And Peggy. I loved them, I’m not sure I could have ever chosen between them. Howard knew that. We were just buddies helping each other out.”

Phil stayed silent while Clint worked his jaw for a few moments. Finally Clint slapped the counter with one hand. “Nah. No way. Howard spent millions of dollars looking for you. He never stopped. It was a Stark Industries expedition that did find you, SHEILD was there on consult. Howard is the one who donated millions to get the Steve Rogers Memorial Wing at the Smithsonian established. He never loved Maria, everyone knew that, it was a high society match from the start. It makes total sense if she was his beard.”

Steve got a gnawing, unhappy feeling in his stomach, Howard’s words from their big fight echoing down the years: _I’ll never get what I want. Never! I’ll get married to a woman I don’t love and have kids I don’t want and you can just go to hell!_ All the things Howard refused to talk about and his genuine happiness whenever Steve showed up, made a new, tragic sense to him. “He was in love with me.”

Phil nodded again, this time with a sadness that gutted Steve.

Clint shrugged. “Yeah, Cap, I think so. It’s pretty obvious once you know about, well, you. If Captain America is gay, or sorta gay, or whatever you want to call yourself, and had a little 'thing' going on with Howard, then a lot of things start falling into place. And no way someone as smart as Tony isn’t going to fit those pieces together. And then? Boom.” He mimed an explosion in his hands.

“Boom? Why boom?" Steve shook his head. "Yeah, he won't like it. He'll hate it, I get that. But according to google, Tony is bisexual himself. How shocked could he be by my, or even his father’s, dalliances?”

Clint snorted in annoyance and turned to Phil. “He never, ever figured out that Howard was in love with him until now, so really, is this a surprise?”

Phil looked thoughtful. “I suppose not.”

Clint shrugged again and turned back to Steve. “You want to buy a clue?”

“I want to know what the problem is here.” Steve folded his arms and glared at them both.

Phil sighed. “We were talking about you coming out of the closet.”

“We were?” Steve frowned, replaying the conversation.

“This is gonna be epic.” Clint grinned, earning a reproachful look from Phil.

“It’s your choice whether to live openly as a bisexual, however you want to define that. I support your decision, but I won’t lie and say it won’t come with a cost. And part of that cost might be losing Stark as a member of the team.”

Steve stared at Phil for a long time, but the man was serious. Steve had imagined that Tony would blow up about it, maybe even hate Steve for a while, but Phil was making a much stronger case. “Are you telling me he’s that much of a hypocrite?”

Clint sighed. “No, he’s telling you that Tony is smart enough to connect the dots, figure out you were the love of his father’s life, and then never speak to you again.”

“But why? What are you two not telling me?” Steve slapped the already broken counter top, which crumbled some more.

Clint’s eyebrows went up and he looked over at Phil. “Whoa.”

“JARVIS already has a work order in.”

“Coulson.” Steve snapped, his patience at an end.

“What Phil doesn’t want to tell you is that Tony is madly in love with you. Like, crazy mad. Meanwhile you’re still all tied up over Bucky and Peggy, right? And his father was in love with you. So yeah: big awesome disaster in the making. You gonna eat that?” Clint pointed at the forgotten sandwich.

Steve pushed the sandwich at him, feeling dazed. “Tony?”

“No, I’m Clint. Sandwich?” Clint talked with his mouth full.

“I mean—”

Phil sighed. “Yes: Tony. He’s not been subtle.”

“I thought he was just…I thought he just wanted some action.”

Clint choked on the sandwich, gasping for air. "I can't believe Captain America is talking about getting some action!"

"Please, please shut up." Phil rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Clint laughed loudly and poked at Phil before turned back to Steve. "Look, okay, think of it this way: you were banging Howard and didn’t notice he was in love with you either."

Steve glared between them. “I think it would be more accurate to say that Howard was banging me.”

Clint coughed so hard he fell of the stool, and Phil ended up pounding him on the back, his own expression stunned and frozen. Clint waved him off. “Uh, smooth, Cap. Is that how you're going to tell Tony? Because I don’t think that will work out for you guys. Or us. Or, you know, anyone.”

“I don’t plan on telling Tony!” Steve yelled.

“Okay, Captain. We hear you. Calm down,” Phil spoke loudly and slowly.

Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Are you sure that Tony is in love with me? He's not just interested in the packaging?"

“I think everyone from Phil to the sentient vacuum cleaner knows that, Cap,” Clint said, attacking the sandwich again. “The mystery is how you don’t know.”

“Steve, the real question here is how you feel about Tony.” Phil folded his hands on the counter.

“No, it’s not. That is not an issue here at all.”

Clint stopped chewing and joined Phil in staring at Steve.

“What?” Steve tried not to shuffle his feet like a kid.

“Aw hell, you like him, don’t you?” Clint dropped the sandwich in defeat.

Phil sighed heavily and put his head back down on his hands. Clint rubbed his back.

“Tony is all but engaged to Pepper. What I feel doesn’t matter, here.”

"You've already admitted to being in love with both Bucky and Peggy, don't pretend you don't understand how this works." Clint rolled his eyes.

"Before you got here, I kissed Phil." Steve shot the words at Clint, who tensed up, his focus zeroing in with deadly accuracy on Steve.

"Rogers, that's enough!" Phil stood up.

"Tell me how you feel about that, Clint. Happy? At ease? Maybe you just don't care that the man Phil's admired his whole life, Captain America, kissed the ever loving hell out of him while you weren't here. Is that it?"

Phil pushed Clint away from the counter to put space between them. "Low blow, Rogers, I expect better from you."

Steve finally looked at Phil. "I'm giving him a living, breathing example of how these things work. It doesn't matter how I feel, what matters is the relationship between you and Clint. The love between Tony and Pepper."

"You did not kiss the ever loving hell out of me, and you know it. It was a pretty chaste kiss."

Clint jerked like being electrocuted. "He did kiss you?" He grabbed Phil's arm and squeezed it, hard enough to cut blood circulation. Steve stepped back a little, not sure if he should stay out of it or not.

"He was making a point. I did not expect it to happen and I did not encourage him. It was Rogers' idea, start to finish."

"That's true," Steve offered after a few moments of Clint staring Phil down.

Clint closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. "Okay, okay, you made your fucking point, Cap." He let go of Phil, then turned to look at Steve again. "For the record, I'm not a jealous asshole. I just like some notice before my guy goes around swapping spit with a gorgeous man."

Steve felt his ears heat up. "I'll keep that in mind."

Clint smirked, his relaxed attitude returning easily. "What you do about the situation? Up to you. All I'm saying is that you know it's possible to be in love with two people at the same time. Give Tony some credit, he'd figure out how if he thought the offer was on the table."

"It's not." Steve shook his head. "So drop it."

Phil was looking at Steve carefully, inspecting his face, before his eyes widened. "Oh. You're still in love with Bucky."

Caught off guard, Steve turned and threw a punch into the door of his refrigerator, collapsing it in on itself to the point that its hinges broke. They all watched in silence as the door wobbled for a moment, then slowly crashed to the floor.

"Get out. We're done."

Clint squawked a little but managed to cling to the rest of his sandwich as Phil hustled him out of the apartment.

Steve took a few deep breaths, then carefully picked up the box with the green scarf in it and carried it to his bedroom, walking through to his huge closet that was barely half-full with his wardrobe. He opened a drawer filled with spare sweats and buried the box deep in the bottom, laying several shirts on top of it. Sliding the drawer closed felt like coming to the end of a book about a story long over and far in the past.


	15. Chapter 15

"Winter Soldier's here!" Tony announced, zipping around, using his repulsors to blast the machines to pieces. 

"I haven't even had my coffee yet," Phil intoned dryly. "Where?"

"North-east, in the Harbor Bank building."

"Watching, not playing," Natasha added from wherever she had ghosted to. It was mere chance that she was around during the call to assemble, having dropped in the night before to report to Fury. She had pointedly ignored every question Steve put to her, and he was almost (almost) glad for the distraction because not knowing what she was doing, or what she had discovered, was driving him crazy. But in the meantime, he had other problems to deal with.

"Can't focus on him if he's not in the game," Steve said, jogging down the street towards the action. The swarm of ice-box sized machines had shown up at dawn in a small New York town — Steve really didn't even know where he was, more than "10 minute flight out of the city" — and started using their hammer-arms to reduce local strip malls and business districts to, literally, rubble. They seemed disinterested in people, which was a relief for everyone involved, but the other side of that coin was that the machines were ruthlessly efficient in destroying anything that didn't move. The Avengers were there because the National Guard had done a great job of getting in the swarm's way but not in slowing it down. Two Guardsmen had been wounded during the pullout, and millions of dollars worth of tanks and trucks had been lost. The small city's mayor was apoplectic with rage, watching her entire city being demolished, and was currently under arrest for punching the lieutenant in charge of the operation in the face. Steve assumed that the Avengers had been called in because it wasn't like the Hulk was doing to do worse than the "Destructo-Bots" (as Tony and, unsurprisingly, Clint, were calling them). 

Mostly, everyone was worried about what the machines would do when the city was completely flat — self-destruct, or move on to another target? Bruce, before the Hulk appeared, said that his money was on this being a test run, and the machines would run down or destroy themselves. There were no guarantees of that, so the National Guard was already evacuating every city within a 50-mile radius. 

How the Winter Soldier knew to be there, already in hiding and ready to strike, was something they were all going to have to address at a later point. Mentally, Steve tagged Natasha, because it did seem a coincidence…and Steve was not humoring coincidences at that point in his life. 

Steve and the Hulk walked straight into the wall of the swarm swinging hard. Steve had grabbed a crowbar on the way and was using it like a mace, taking out three machines at a time with one swing. The Hulk was stomping and throwing and laughing, because it wasn't often he got to just let loose and have fun. Clint had gone up on an extended fire truck ladder, shooting exploding arrows into the swarm. The fireman at the wheel looked delighted to be rolling the truck around the city like Hawkeye's personal chauffeur. Thor and Tony were zooming around, zapping at the machines, competing with each other for how many they could take out at a time.

Steve almost missed the moment when it all went to hell, zoned in on creating his own swath of destruction and only paying minimal attention to the chatter on the comm.

"Widow's DOWN!" Phil yelled into the comms. Steve kept swinging but refocused. 

"Where?" He shouted over the sound of the Hulk roaring in anger.

"We've got her! But the bots turned on her, I think they've finally registered a threat." Phil said, breathing hard like he had been running. "Get her to medical! Go!" He shouted to someone else, and a helicopter took off at a high rate of speed from where HQ had been set up. Steve's stomach churned. 

"I'm on the office building at 4th and Carrol! The bots grabbed the truck, Jesus they are hammering it flat. The driver's running for your location, Coulson." 

"You're deep in it, Hawkeye," Steve said, mentally mapping Clint's location. 

"I'm, uh, kind of surrounded. And nearly out of ammo. Guys, uh, help?" 

Steve looked over to see the Hulk covered head to toe in the machines, ripping them off of himself and breaking them apart as they hammered at his skin. He was nearly invisible under the dog pile of machines. 

"On my way, Hawkeye." Steve charged forward, moving too fast to let himself get covered as he smashed his way towards Hawkeye. "Thor, meet us there!"

"Aye!" 

"I'm busy trying to keep them from massing for our field base. Coulson get everyone the fuck out of there!" Tony yelled, too far away for Steve to see what was going on. 

"On it!" Coulson answered tersely, and the comms were quiet for a few moments while everyone got down to business. 

The building was already half destroyed by the time Steve got there. Clint was on the roof, kicking machines off of it and doing a masterful acrobatics routine to stay out of the way of their hammers-arms. Steve took one look and then ran up over the machines, "head walking" (although they did not have heads) all four floors up. 

"Nice! I used to have an act like that, running up arrows in a wall!" Clint yelled, rolling and kicking a machine. 

"Thor!" Steve shouted, because Clint was always a smart ass but that did not mean they weren't surrounded and losing ground. 

"I've got a trace on the beacon!" Tony said and zoomed away, headed west. 

Steve swung the crow bar and took out two machines crawling over the edge, then nearly stumbled as Clint let out an ear-splitting howl behind him. Steve used his shield to push three more back over the edge as he barreled toward where Clint was down, his left femur solidly broken, one of the machines getting ready to hammer right down on his skull. Steve spun his shield through the air, cutting the machine in half, just as Thor landed. They cleared the roof while Clint clutched at his leg, visibly going into shock. "Thor, get him out of here!"

"And of you, Captain?" Thor asked, wrapping his cape around Clint and holding the full grown and screaming man to his chest like a precious child. 

"Just go! I'll get out!" 

Thor nodded solemnly, kicked two more machines out of his way while swinging Mjolinor and then took flight. 

Steve picked up his shield and swung the crowbar around, waiting for the assault. He had only a few seconds reprieve before another wave of machines pulled up over the edge of the crumbling building, hammering it apart as they aimed for him. 

The machines were too much for him to handle alone, but at the very least Thor had pulled Clint out which had been Steve's primary goal. He tried for a retreat but he was as blocked in as Clint had been, and the Hulk was busy with his own offensive front. Phil was flat out yelling into the comms to bring air support to Steve's location.

As he tried to pummel his way free, Steve thought it was surprising how much a good old fashioned beating could accomplish. The machines had no real weapons other than their hammer-like arms, no guns or knives or plasma guns or whatever else were the modern fashion for lethal weaponry. They just hit. Hard.

A blow to his knee took him down, and as he rolled onto the ground with a cry of pain, he flashed back to all the times he had been the object of a beat down in his youth. He knew rescue was coming, he could hear jet engines and choppers, but as the blows rained down on him his brain flipped backwards in time and he curled up on his side, hiding his face and chest and soft belly just like Bucky had taught him when they were kids. He slung the arm holding his shield up, hearing it take off a few hammer-arms before he managed to secure it over his head and neck. It left his back and kidneys open, and his legs, but he could only do so much, and he cried out in pain as the machines started hammering on him like he was a nail, feeling his legs getting snapped in several places. He gasped for breath during a pause in the beating, then realized it wasn't a pause. He took a few more hits on his exposed hip, cracking his pelvis, before it stopped completely. His brain fuzzy with pain and confusion, Steve didn't move. 

"Steve! Jesus, Steve!" Bucky's hand tucked under the shield to feel for Steve's neck. "C'mon, buddy, breathe. Don't freeze up."

"Breathing," Steve gasped. 

"Sure you are, punk. Roll over, for fuck's sake, let me look at you."

"I'm…I'm _fine_ Bucky, stop mothering me, damn it." Steve unfolded and slowly rolled onto his back, yelling shamelessly as everything from his waist down over-taxed his nervous system with pristine agony. Bucky gently pulled the shield out of the way and wiped the blood from Steve's mouth. 

"You sound like you inhaled the exhaust out of a Model A, don't give me shit." Bucky pat down his chest. "You're legs are wrecked, but I'm not going to carry you if you broke a rib." He tsk'd. "Look what you did."

"I didn't do anything!" Steve pushed his hands away and tried to sit up, then stopped. "Ugh."

"Right. Asshole, like you never start the fight?"

Steve grinned at the familiar rebuke, looking up at Bucky who was perched over him — dressed in black, his eyes rimmed with kohl and a bright silver arm holding the shield up, as if protecting them from— 

" _PUT DOWN THE SHIELD, WINTER SOLDIER!_ " Phil's voice blasted through the air from the helicopter hovering above them. 

Bucky looked confused, peering over the shield and then back down at Steve. "Steve? What? I—"

And then Bucky disappeared, the Winter Soldier's eyes dark and cold. He stood up and hurled the shield at the helicopter, taking off a landing strut as the chopper jerked away, and simply walked over the edge of the roof. 

The Winter Soldier was gone. 

Steve settled back down slowly amongst the wreckage of the machines that Bucky had destroyed in order to get to Steve. He felt his body mending, and wondered what in the hell had just happened.


End file.
